AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional — Question 329

A Development team has created a series of AWS CloudFormation templates to help deploy services. They created a template for a network/virtual private cloud
(VPC) stack, a database stack, a bastion host stack, and a web application-specific stack. Each service requires the deployment of at least:
✑ A network/VPC stack
✑ A bastion host stack
✑ A web application stack
Each template has multiple input parameters that make it difficult to deploy the services individually from the AWS CloudFormation console. The input parameters from one stack are typically outputs from other stacks. For example, the VPC ID, subnet IDs, and security groups from the network stack may need to be used in the application stack or database stack.
Which actions will help reduce both the operational burden and the number of parameters passed into a service deployment? (Choose two.)

Answer options

• A. Create a new AWS CloudFormation template for each service. Alter the existing templates to use cross-stack references to eliminate passing many parameters to each template. Call each required stack for the application as a nested stack from the new stack. Call the newly created service stack from the AWS CloudFormation console to deploy the specific service with a subset of the parameters previously required.
• B. Create a new portfolio in AWS Service Catalog for each service. Create a product for each existing AWS CloudFormation template required to build the service. Add the products to the portfolio that represents that service in AWS Service Catalog. To deploy the service, select the specific service portfolio and launch the portfolio with the necessary parameters to deploy all templates.
• C. Set up an AWS CodePipeline workflow for each service. For each existing template, choose AWS CloudFormation as a deployment action. Add the AWS CloudFormation template to the deployment action. Ensure that the deployment actions are processed to make sure that dependencies are obeyed. Use configuration files and scripts to share parameters between the stacks. To launch the service, execute the specific template by choosing the name of the service and releasing a change.
• D. Use AWS Step Functions to define a new service. Create a new AWS CloudFormation template for each service. Alter the existing templates to use cross- stack references to eliminate passing many parameters to each template. Call each required stack for the application as a nested stack from the new service template. Configure AWS Step Functions to call the service template directly. In the AWS Step Functions console, execute the step.
• E. Create a new portfolio for the services in AWS Service Catalog. Create a new AWS CloudFormation template for each service. Alter the existing templates to use cross-stack references to eliminate passing many parameters to each template. Call each required stack for the application as a nested stack from the new stack. Create a product for each application. Add the service template to the product. Add each new product to the portfolio. Deploy the product from the portfolio to deploy the service with the necessary parameters only to start the deployment.

Correct answer: A, E

Explanation

Using nested stacks combined with cross-stack references is the AWS-recommended way to simplify parameter passing and manage dependencies between related templates. Option A correctly implements this nesting and cross-referencing model to reduce parameter overhead for console deployments. Option E takes this a step further by wrapping the nested master templates inside AWS Service Catalog products, which provides a governed, self-service mechanism that dramatically reduces operational burden for end users.