Create RDS using Cloud Formation

Photo by Mehmet Ali Peker on Unsplash

Today we have a different proposal instead of using terraform, which helps us a lot. I decided to propose a different challenge and start making some components being created via Cloud Formation. The result I will show below is very interesting for AWS users, Sysadmins, DevOps, and Cloud professionals.

An RDS, IAM role and VPC will be created via CloudFormation

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: "2010-09-09"
Description: Create an RDS instance, IAM role, and CloudWatch alarm

Resources:
  MyVPC:
    Type: AWS::EC2::VPC
    Properties:
      CidrBlock: 10.0.0.0/16
      EnableDnsSupport: true
      EnableDnsHostnames: true

  MyRDSInstance:
    Type: AWS::RDS::DBInstance
    Properties:
      DBInstanceIdentifier: epma-rds
      AllocatedStorage: 20
      DBInstanceClass: db.t2.micro
      Engine: mysql
      MasterUsername: admin
      MasterUserPassword: adminpassword
      VPCSecurityGroups:
        - !Ref MyDBSecurityGroup
      AvailabilityZone: us-east-1a
      DBSubnetGroupName: !Ref MyDBSubnetGroup
      MultiAZ: false

  MyDBSecurityGroup:
    Type: AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup
    Properties:
      GroupDescription: Security group for RDS instance
      VpcId: !Ref MyVPC

  MyDBSubnetGroup:
    Type: AWS::RDS::DBSubnetGroup
    Properties:
      DBSubnetGroupName: epma-rds-subnet-group
      DBSubnetGroupDescription: Subnet group for RDS instance
      SubnetIds:
        - !Ref MySubnet1
        - !Ref MySubnet2

  MySubnet1:
    Type: AWS::EC2::Subnet
    Properties:
      VpcId: !Ref MyVPC
      AvailabilityZone: us-east-1a
      CidrBlock: 10.0.0.0/24

  MySubnet2:
    Type: AWS::EC2::Subnet
    Properties:
      VpcId: !Ref MyVPC
      AvailabilityZone: us-east-1b
      CidrBlock: 10.0.1.0/24

  MyIAMRole:
    Type: AWS::IAM::Role
    Properties:
      RoleName: epma-rds-role
      AssumeRolePolicyDocument:
        Version: "2012-10-17"
        Statement:
          - Effect: Allow
            Principal:
              Service: rds.amazonaws.com
            Action: sts:AssumeRole
      Policies:
        - PolicyName: RDSAccessPolicy
          PolicyDocument:
            Version: "2012-10-17"
            Statement:
              - Effect: Allow
                Action:
                  - rds:CreateDBSnapshot
                  - rds:DeleteDBSnapshot
                  - rds:DescribeDBSnapshots
                  - rds:DescribeDBInstances
                Resource: "*"

  MyCloudWatchAlarm:
    Type: AWS::CloudWatch::Alarm
    Properties:
      AlarmName: RDSFreeStorageSpaceAlarm
      ComparisonOperator: LessThanThreshold
      EvaluationPeriods: 1
      MetricName: FreeStorageSpace
      Namespace: AWS/RDS
      Period: 300
      Statistic: Average
      Threshold: 1000000000  # 1 GB
      AlarmDescription: Alarm if free storage space drops below 1GB
      AlarmActions:
        - !Ref MySNSTopic

  MySNSTopic:
    Type: AWS::SNS::Topic
    Properties:
      DisplayName: RDSAlarmTopic
      TopicName: RDSAlarmTopic

Outputs:
  RDSInstanceEndpoint:
    Description: Endpoint of the RDS instance
    Value: !GetAtt MyRDSInstance.Endpoint.Address

This template creates the following resources:

1. VPC (MyVPC)
2. RDS instance (MyRDSInstance) with the specified parameters.
3. Security group (MyDBSecurityGroup) for the RDS instance.
4. DB subnet group (MyDBSubnetGroup) for the RDS instance.
5. Subnets (MySubnet1 and MySubnet2) in the VPC.
6. IAM role (MyIAMRole) with the necessary permissions for RDS.
7. CloudWatch alarm (MyCloudWatchAlarm) to monitor free storage space. (Optional)
8. SNS topic (MySNSTopic) for CloudWatch alarm notifications.

I will do the process via the AWS console for those who have never used CloudFormation, go to Console — Cloud Formation — Create a new stack and then follow the screens step by step.

Take my code above and open the view design and paste the code there.

Take my code above and open the view design and paste the code there.

I just made one small change — I shortened the name.

To remove and destroy the environment, just delete the stack.

Thank you for your support and if you can help me, please like and share with your friends. And if you can also follow me, that will give me more reason to write. If you have any questions, you can write in the comments.