5 ms·

Why do you think Cloudformation sucks?

KirinDave 10y ago
Because massive json files with pseudo-invocation syntax and a ton of gaping issues that aren't readily solved by pre-existing template solutions pauses for breath and just bizarre decisions about holding and fielding and really poor integration with new services (you can tie ECS clusters in a knot with CF trivially) and API call limit hits KOing CF provisioning jobs and... I mean, what it's doing is hard and I use it over, say, Chef... but it's not a "good" product. Heck, you cannot even truly validate CF templates without running them. The CLI and builder just do a crude structural check pass. Got a case error in a nested structure? Too bad, the entire job is rolling back.
- scrollaway 10y ago
  While we're on the subject, I want to mention terraform (https://www.terraform.io/ https://www.terraform.io/). I'm not going to straight up recommend using it, but I will recommend checking it out. It's certainly a lot better than CF, but it still has really glaring issues and very much feels like alpha software (see discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12213935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12213935 and some of my complaints here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12214358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12214358).
  - yeukhon 10y ago
    I am on the opposite fence. I also comment on the recent Terraform discussion. Basically the abstraction layer is too complex; why not template JSON and build the cloudformation stack? In the end, nested CF stack is still, a hard problem.
    - scrollaway 10y ago
      Why do you think the abstraction layer is too complex? I found terraform was essentially designed with AWS as a first-class citizen (if not for AWS in the first place), which means everything maps really well. I strongly dislike HCL, but that's essentially what it is - templated JSON.
dack 10y ago
Not the parent, but for one, doing a CF update is all-or-nothing. Either you roll the whole thing out, or you roll the whole thing back. If you have a lot of servers, and things are going down, you want to just STOP. But you can't. Also, if you click too quickly, sometimes you can get into a weird state and not be able to rollback OR update anymore.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Same thing happens with other tools like Terraform though: once you've kicked off an apply, you are committed.
  - adamveld12 10y ago
    yeah, but having the option to run 'terraform plan' really helps you know what you're getting yourself into.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      We've had Terraform take action that wasn't in the plan, in production. I call it "pray and apply". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12214879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12214879
  - jacques_chester 10y ago
    BOSH is able to cancel operations. You press Ctrl+C and it asks if that's what you intend.
- cheeseprocedure 10y ago
  CloudFormation change sets make CF updates a little less painful/mysterious: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-change-sets-for-aws-cloudformation/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-change-sets-for-aws-clo...
  - kureikain 10y ago
    changeset is very limited. when you have sub stack, change set cannot detect thing change in sub stack :(
abrookewood 10y ago
There are a few issues: stacks sometimes partially complete and you are left with a bit of a mess; stack creation has insanely long timeouts and a lot of retries, so it often sits there for 15 minutes before eventually failing; and deletions can fail part way through because there is some dependency that isn't obvious (and which they don't make it easy to find). I still like it (infrastructure as code is cool), but it needs more work.

Because massive json files with pseudo-invocation syntax and a ton of gaping issues that aren't readily solved by pre-existing template solutions pauses for breath and just bizarre decisions about holding and fielding and really poor integration with new services (you can tie ECS clusters in a knot with CF trivially) and API call limit hits KOing CF provisioning jobs and... I mean, what it's doing is hard and I use it over, say, Chef... but it's not a "good" product. Heck, you cannot even truly validate CF templates without running them. The CLI and builder just do a crude structural check pass. Got a case error in a nested structure? Too bad, the entire job is rolling back.

scrollaway 10y ago
While we're on the subject, I want to mention terraform (https://www.terraform.io/ https://www.terraform.io/). I'm not going to straight up recommend using it, but I will recommend checking it out. It's certainly a lot better than CF, but it still has really glaring issues and very much feels like alpha software (see discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12213935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12213935 and some of my complaints here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12214358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12214358).
- yeukhon 10y ago
  I am on the opposite fence. I also comment on the recent Terraform discussion. Basically the abstraction layer is too complex; why not template JSON and build the cloudformation stack? In the end, nested CF stack is still, a hard problem.
  - scrollaway 10y ago
    Why do you think the abstraction layer is too complex? I found terraform was essentially designed with AWS as a first-class citizen (if not for AWS in the first place), which means everything maps really well. I strongly dislike HCL, but that's essentially what it is - templated JSON.

dack 10y ago

Not the parent, but for one, doing a CF update is all-or-nothing. Either you roll the whole thing out, or you roll the whole thing back. If you have a lot of servers, and things are going down, you want to just STOP. But you can't. Also, if you click too quickly, sometimes you can get into a weird state and not be able to rollback OR update anymore.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
Same thing happens with other tools like Terraform though: once you've kicked off an apply, you are committed.
- adamveld12 10y ago
  yeah, but having the option to run 'terraform plan' really helps you know what you're getting yourself into.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    We've had Terraform take action that wasn't in the plan, in production. I call it "pray and apply". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12214879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12214879
- jacques_chester 10y ago
  BOSH is able to cancel operations. You press Ctrl+C and it asks if that's what you intend.
cheeseprocedure 10y ago
CloudFormation change sets make CF updates a little less painful/mysterious: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-change-sets-for-aws-cloudformation/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-change-sets-for-aws-clo...
- kureikain 10y ago
  changeset is very limited. when you have sub stack, change set cannot detect thing change in sub stack :(

abrookewood 10y ago

There are a few issues: stacks sometimes partially complete and you are left with a bit of a mess; stack creation has insanely long timeouts and a lot of retries, so it often sits there for 15 minutes before eventually failing; and deletions can fail part way through because there is some dependency that isn't obvious (and which they don't make it easy to find). I still like it (infrastructure as code is cool), but it needs more work.