Question

A developer maintains a production CloudFormation stack that runs a public-facing API. Before applying a modified template that alters an RDS instance and several IAM policies, the team wants to review exactly which resources will be added, modified, or replaced — and specifically whether any resource will require replacement — WITHOUT actually making any changes to the running stack. What should the developer do?

Accepted Answer

Create a CloudFormation change set from the updated template and inspect it before executing it.

Answer

Run drift detection on the stack to preview the impact of the new template.

Answer

Deploy the updated template to the stack and monitor the Events tab, rolling back if a replacement occurs.

Answer

Enable termination protection on the stack and then run stack update to see the differences.