StackMaster is a sure-footed way of creating, updating and keeping track of Amazon (AWS) CloudFormation stacks.

• See the changes you are making to a stack before you apply them
• Connect stacks
• Keep secrets secret
• Customise stacks in different environments
• Apply descriptive labels to regions

StackMaster provides an easy command line interface to managing CloudFormation stacks defined with templates specified in either the SparkleFormation DSL or standard JSON format.

Installation

System-wide: gem install stack_master

With bundler:

• Add gem 'stack_master' to your Gemfile.
• Run bundle install
• Run bundle exec stack_master init to generate a directory structure and stack_master.yml file

Configuration

Stacks are defined inside a stack_master.yml YAML file. When running stack_master, it is assumed that this file will exist in the current working directory, or that the file is passed in with --config /path/to/stack_master.yml. Here's an example configuration file:

region_aliases:
  production: us-east-1
  staging: ap-southeast-2
stack_defaults:
  tags:
    application: my-awesome-app
region_defaults:
  us-east-1:
    secret_file: production.yml.gpg
    tags:
      environment: production
    notification_arns:
      - test_arn
  ap-southeast-2:
    secret_file: staging.yml.gpg
    tags:
      environment: staging
stacks:
  production:
    myapp-vpc:
      template: myapp_vpc.rb
    myapp-db:
      template: myapp_db.rb
      stack_policy_file: db_stack_policy.json
    myapp-web:
      template: myapp_web.rb
  staging:
    myapp-vpc:
      template: myapp_vpc.rb
    myapp-db:
      template: myapp_db.rb
    myapp-web:
      template: myapp_web.rb
  eu-central-1:
    myapp-vpc:
      template: myapp_vpc.rb

Directories

• templates - CloudFormation or SparkleFormation templates.
• polices - Stack policies.
• parameters - Parameters as YAML files.
• secrets - GPG encrypted secret files.

Parameters

Parameters are loaded from multiple YAML files, merged from the following lookup paths:

• parameters/[stack_name].yml
• parameters/[region]/[stack_name].yml
• parameters/[region_alias]/[stack_name].yml

A simple parameter file could look like this:

key_name: myapp-us-east-1

Keys in parameter files are automatically converted to camel case.

Parameter Resolvers

Parameter resolvers enable dynamic resolution of parameter values. A parameter using a resolver will be a hash with one key where the key is the name of the resolver.

One benefit of using resolvers instead of hard coding values like VPC ID's and resource ARNs is that the same configuration works cross region, even though the resolved values will be different.

Stack Output

The stack output parameter resolver looks up outputs from other stacks in the same region. The expected format is [stack-name]/[OutputName].

vpc_id:
  stack_output: my-vpc-stack/VpcId

Secret

The secret parameters resolver expects a secret_file to be defined in the stack definition which is a GPG encrypted YAML file. Once decrypted and parsed, the value provided to the secret resolver is used to lookup the associated key in the secret file. A common use case for this is to store database passwords.

stack_master.yml:

stacks:
  us-east-1:
    my_app:
      template: my_app.json
      secret_file: production.yml.gpg

secrets/production.yml.gpg, when decrypted:

db_password: my-password

parameters/my_app.yml:

db_password:
  secret: db_password

Security Group

Looks up a security group by name and returns the ARN.

ssh_sg:
  security_group: SSHSecurityGroup

SNS Topic

Looks up an SNS topic by name and returns the ARN.

notification_topic:
  sns_topic: PagerDuty

Latest AMI by Tag

Looks up the latest AMI ID by a given set of tags.

web_ami:
  latest_ami_by_tags: role=web,application=myapp

Custom parameter resolvers

New parameter resolvers can be created in a separate gem.

To create a resolver named my_resolver:

• Create a new gem using your favorite tool
• The gem structure must contain the following path: lib/stack_master/parameter_resolvers/my_resolver.rb

• That file need to contain a class named StackMaster::ParameterResolvers::MyResolver that implements a resolve method and an initializer taking 2 parameters :

  module StackMaster
  module ParameterResolvers
  class MyResolver
    def initialize(config, stack_definition)
      @config = config
      @stack_definition = stack_definition
    end
  
    def resolve(value)
      value
    end
  end
  end
  end
  

• Note that the filename and classname are both derived from the resolver name passed in the parameter file. In our case, the parameters YAML would look like:

  vpc_id:
  my_resolver: dummy_value
  

Commands

stack_master help # Display up to date docs on the commands available
stack_master init # Initialises a directory structure and stack_master.yml file
stack_master list # Lists stack definitions
stack_master apply <region-or-alias> <stack-name> # Create or update a stack
stack_master diff <region-or-alias> <stack-name> # Display a stack tempalte and parameter diff
stack_master delete <region-or-alias> <stack-name> # Delete a stack
stack_master events <region-or-alias> <stack-name> # Display events for a stack
stack_master outputs <region-or-alias> <stack-name> # Display outputs for a stack
stack_master resources <region-or-alias> <stack-name> # Display outputs for a stack
stack_master status # Displays the status of each stack

Applying updates

The apply command does the following:

• Builds the proposed stack json and resolves parameters.
• Fetches the current state of the stack from CloudFormation.
• Displays a diff of the current stack and the proposed stack.
• Asks if the update should continue.
• If yes, the API call is made to update or create the stack.
• Stack events are displayed until CloudFormation has finished applying the changes.

Demo:

Maintainers

• Steve Hodgkiss
• Glen Stampoultzis

License

StackMaster uses the MIT license. See LICENSE.txt for details.

Contributing

1. Fork it ( http://github.com/envato/stack_master/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request