I’ve blogged before about my passion for automation and the use of ARM templating in the Azure world to eradicate the burden of dull and mundane tasks from the daily routine of system administrators for whom I do consulting for.

I loath repetitive tasks, its in this space where subtle differences and inconsistency love to live. Recently I was asked to help out with a simple task, provisioning a couple of EC2 Windows servers in AWS. So in the spirit of infrastructure as code, I thought, there is no better time to try out AWS CloudFormation to describe my EC2 instances . I’ve actually used CloudFormation before in the past, but always describing my stack in JSON. CloudFormation also supports YAML, so challenge accepted and away I went. . .

So what is YAML anyway. . .Yet Another Mark-up Language. Interestingly its described at the official YAML website (https://yaml.org) as a “YAML Ain’t Markup Language” rather,  “human friendly data serialisation standard for all programming languages”.

What attracted me to YAML is its simplicity, there are no curly braces {} just indenting. Its also super easy to read. So if JSON looks a bit to cody for your liking, YAML may be a more palatable alternative.

So how would you get started? As you’d expect AWS have extensive CloudFormation documentation. The AWS::EC2::Instance resource is described here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-properties-ec2-instance.html#cfn-ec2-instance-volumes. You’ll notice that there is a Syntax description for JSON and YAML. The YAML looks like this:

Type: AWS::EC2::Instance
Properties: 
  Affinity: String
  AvailabilityZone: String
  BlockDeviceMappings: 
    - EC2 Block Device Mapping
  CreditSpecification: CreditSpecification
  DisableApiTermination: Boolean
  EbsOptimized: Boolean
  ElasticGpuSpecifications: [ ElasticGpuSpecification, ... ]
  ElasticInferenceAccelerators: 
    - ElasticInferenceAccelerator
  HostId: String
  IamInstanceProfile: String
  ImageId: String
  InstanceInitiatedShutdownBehavior: String
  InstanceType: String
  Ipv6AddressCount: Integer
  Ipv6Addresses:
    - IPv6 Address Type
  KernelId: String
  KeyName: String
  LaunchTemplate: LaunchTemplateSpecification
  LicenseSpecifications: 
    - LicenseSpecification
  Monitoring: Boolean
  NetworkInterfaces: 
    - EC2 Network Interface
  PlacementGroupName: String
  PrivateIpAddress: String
  RamdiskId: String
  SecurityGroupIds: 
    - String
  SecurityGroups: 
    - String
  SourceDestCheck: Boolean
  SsmAssociations: 
    - SSMAssociation
  SubnetId: String
  Tags: 
    - Resource Tag
  Tenancy: String
  UserData: String
  Volumes: 
    - EC2 MountPoint
  AdditionalInfo: String

With this as a starting point I was quickly able to build a EC2 instance and customise my YAML so as to do some extra things.

If you’ve got this far and YAML is starting to look like it might be the ticket for you, its worth familiarising yourself with the CloudFormation built-in functions. You can use these to do things like assign values to properties that are not available until runtime.

Fn::Base64
Fn::Cidr
Condition Functions
Fn::FindInMap
Fn::GetAtt
Fn::GetAZs
Fn::Join
Fn::Select
Fn::Split
Fn::Sub
Fn::Transform
Ref

The link to the complete Intrinsic Function Reference can be found here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/intrinsic-function-reference.html

With a learning curve of a couple of hours including a bit of googling and messing around I was able to achieve my goal. I built an EC2 instance, applied tagging, installed some Windows features post build via a PowerShell script (downloaded from S3 and launched with AWS::CloudFormation::Init cfn-init.exe), all without having to logon to the server or touch the console. Here is a copy of my YAML. . .

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: "2010-09-09"
Description: CloudFormation Template to deploy an EC2 instance
Parameters: 
  Hostname: 
    Type: String
    Description: Hostname - maximum 15 characters
    MaxLength: '15'    
  LatestAmiId :
    Type: 'AWS::SSM::Parameter::Value'
    Default: /aws/service/ami-windows-latest/Windows_Server-2019-English-Full-Base
  InstanceSize: 
    Type: String
    Description: Instance Size
    Default: t2.micro
    AllowedValues:
      - "t2.micro" 
      - "t2.small"
      - "t2.medium"
  AvailabilityZone:
    Type: String
    Description: Default AZ
    AllowedValues: 
      - ap-southeast-2a
      - ap-southeast-2b
      - ap-southeast-2c
    Default: ap-southeast-2a
  KeyPair: 
    Type: String
    Description: KeyPair Name
    Default: jtwo
  S3BucketName:
    Default: NotARealBucket
    Description: S3 bucket containing boot artefacts
    Type: String
  
  # tag values
  awPurpose: 
    Type: String
    Description: A plain English description of what the object is for.
    Default: WindowsServer2019 Domain Controller
  awChargeTo: 
    Type: String
    Description: Billing Code for charge back of resource.
    Default: IT-123
  awRegion: 
    Type: String
    Description: Accolade Wines Region not AWS. 
    Default: Australia
  awExpiry: 
    Type: String
    Description: The date when the resource(s) can be considered for decommissioning.
    Default: 01-01-2022
  awBusinessSegment: 
    Type: String
    Description: Agency code.
    Default: ICT
  awEnvironment: 
    Type: String
    Description: Specific environment for resource.
    AllowedValues: 
      - prod
      - prodServices
      - nonprod
      - uat
      - dev
      - test 
  awApplication: 
    Type: String
    Description: A single or multiple word with the name of the application that the infrastructure supports. "JDE", "AD", "Apache", "Utility", "INFOR", "PKI".
    Default: AD

Mappings:
  SubnetMap: 
    ap-southeast-2a:
      prodServices: "subnet-idGoesHere"
    ap-southeast-2b:
      prodServices: "subnet-idGoesHere"
    ap-southeast-2c:
      prodServices: "subnet-idGoesHere"
      
# Resources
Resources:
  # IAM Instance Profile
  Profile:
    Type: 'AWS::IAM::InstanceProfile'
    Properties:
      Roles:
        - !Ref HostRole
      Path: /
      InstanceProfileName: !Join
        - ''
        - - 'instance-profile-'
          - !Ref S3BucketName
  HostRole:
    Type: 'AWS::IAM::Role'
    Properties:
      RoleName: !Join
        - ''
        - - 'role-s3-read-'
          - !Ref S3BucketName
      Policies:
        - PolicyDocument:
            Version: 2012-10-17
            Statement:
              - Action:
                  - 's3:GetObject'
                Resource: !Join
                  - ''
                  - - 'arn:aws:s3:::'
                    - !Ref S3BucketName
                    - '/*'
                Effect: Allow
          PolicyName: s3-policy-read
      Path: /
      AssumeRolePolicyDocument:
        Statement:
          - Action:
              - 'sts:AssumeRole'
            Principal:
              Service:
                - ec2.amazonaws.com
            Effect: Allow
        Version: 2012-10-17  

  # ENI
  NIC1:
    Type: AWS::EC2::NetworkInterface
    Properties: 
      Description: !Sub 'ENI for EC2 instance: ${Hostname}-${awEnvironment}'
      GroupSet:
          - sg-050cadbf0e159b0ac
      SubnetId: !FindInMap [SubnetMap, !Ref AvailabilityZone, !Ref awEnvironment]
      Tags:
        - Key: Name
          Value: !Sub '${Hostname}-eni'
  
  # EC2 Instance
  Instance:
    Type: 'AWS::EC2::Instance'
    Metadata:
      'AWS::CloudFormation::Authentication':
        S3AccessCreds:
          type: S3
          buckets:
            - !Ref S3BucketName
          roleName: !Ref HostRole
      'AWS::CloudFormation::Init':
        configSets: 
          config:
            - get-files 
            - configure-instance
        get-files:
          files:
            'c:\s3-downloads\scripts\Add-WindowsFeature.ps1':
              source: https://NotARealBucket.s3.amazonaws.com/scripts/Add-WindowsFeature.ps1
              authentication: S3AccessCreds
        configure-instance:
          commands:
            1-set-powershell-execution-policy:
              command: >-
                powershell.exe -Command "Set-ExecutionPolicy UnRestricted -Force"
              waitAfterCompletion: '0'
            2-rename-computer:
              command: !Join
                - ''
                - - >-
                  -  powershell.exe -Command "Rename-Computer -Restart -NewName "
                  -  !Ref Hostname
              waitAfterCompletion: forever  
            3-install-windows-components:
              command: >-
                powershell.exe -Command "c:\s3-downloads\scripts\Add-WindowsFeature.ps1"
              waitAfterCompletion: '0'


    Properties:
      DisableApiTermination: 'false'
      AvailabilityZone: !Sub "${AvailabilityZone}"
      InstanceInitiatedShutdownBehavior: stop
      IamInstanceProfile: !Ref Profile
      ImageId: !Ref LatestAmiId
      InstanceType: !Sub "${InstanceSize}"
      KeyName: !Sub "${KeyPair}"
      UserData: !Base64
        'Fn::Join': 
          - ''
          - - "\n"
            - "cfn-init.exe "
            - " --stack "
            - "Ref": "AWS::StackId"
            - " --resource Instance"
            - " --region "
            - "Ref": "AWS::Region"
            - " --configsets config"
            - " -v \n"
            - "cfn-signal.exe  "
            - " ---exit-code 0"
            - " --region "
            - "Ref": "AWS::Region"
            - " --resource Instance" 
            - " --stack "
            - "Ref": "AWS::StackName"
            - "\n"           
            - "\n"
      Tags:
        - Key: Name
          Value: !Sub "${Hostname}"
        - Key: awPurpose
          Value: !Sub "${awPurpose}"
        - Key: awChargeTo
          Value: !Sub "${awChargeTo}"
        - Key: awRegion
          Value: !Sub "${awRegion}"
        - Key: awExpiry
          Value: !Sub "${awExpiry}"
        - Key: awBusinessSegment
          Value: !Sub "${awBusinessSegment}"
        - Key: awEnvironment
          Value: !Sub "${awEnvironment}"
        - Key: awApplication
          Value: !Sub "${awApplication}"

      NetworkInterfaces:
        - NetworkInterfaceId: !Ref NIC1
          DeviceIndex: 0

Outputs:
  InstanceId:
    Description: 'InstanceId'
    Value: !Ref Instance
    Export:
      Name: !Sub '${Hostname}-${awEnvironment}-InstanceId'
  InstancePrivateIP:
    Description: 'InstancePrivateIP'
    Value: !GetAtt Instance.PrivateIp
    Export:
      Name: !Sub '${Hostname}-${awEnvironment}-InstancePrivateIP'

So my question now is, why doesn’t Azure also support YAML?