> DeletionPolicy=Retain with named resources Try to avoid naming resources ("Name" property), so there would be no clashes. Use Ref (same stack) or ImportValue

> DeletionPolicy=Retain with named resources Try to avoid naming resources ("Name" property), so there would be no clashes. Use Ref (same stack) or ImportValue (other stack) to reference created resources. If you want, you may concatenate (Fn:Join "AWS:StackName", "-public-elb"). Cloud way is you replace things, rather than keeping it. It is convenient to know, that if I delete CF stack, everything is cleaned. Speaking of S3, its better not to include bucket resource in CF until you know what you're doing. > stuff like RDS databases which you absolutely never ever want to have destroyed That begs for a separate CF stack, with template creating RDS and related things only, then export endpoint in Outputs.