Question

A DevOps team manages a production CloudFormation stack that deploys an application tier. They need to migrate an existing manually-created DynamoDB table into this stack so it becomes CloudFormation-managed, without any downtime or data loss. The table receives constant read/write traffic. Which approach correctly brings the table under management while minimizing risk?

Accepted Answer

Add the DynamoDB table resource to the template with a DeletionPolicy of Retain, then use a resource import operation (import change set) that maps the existing table's physical ID to the new logical resource, and review the change set before executing.

Answer

Delete the existing table, add the resource to the template, and redeploy the stack so CloudFormation recreates the table with the same name.

Answer

Add the table to the template and run a standard stack update; CloudFormation will automatically detect the existing physical resource by name and adopt it.

Answer

Enable drift detection on the stack, which will import any out-of-band resources it discovers into the stack's managed resource set.