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UpdateReplacePolicy Attribute In AWS CloudFormation

This article describes the UpdateReplacePolicy attribute in AWS CloudFormation.

Purpose

The UpdateReplacePolicy attribute specifies how CloudFormation handles resource replacement during stack updates. There are three possible values.

Value	Description
Retain	The existing resource is preserved instead of being deleted when replaced.
Delete	The existing resource is deleted when replaced (default behaviour).
Snapshot	A snapshot of the resource is taken before deletion.

Create An S3 Bucket

To begin with, create a S3 bucket with the following YAML.

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: "2010-09-09"
Resources:
  MyS3Bucket:
    Type: AWS::S3::Bucket
    Properties:
      BucketName: updatereplacepolicygyansangrah1

Picture showing the bucket updatereplacepolicygyansangrah1 is created using CloudFormation template

The next step is to create another bucket using the following YAML.

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: "2010-09-09"
Resources:
  MyS3Bucket:
    Type: AWS::S3::Bucket
    Properties:
      BucketName: updatereplacepolicygyansangrah2

Picture showing the bucket updatereplacepolicygyansangrah2 is created using CloudFormation template

The bucket updatereplacepolicygyansangrah1 is deleted.

Updatereplacepolicy Attribute Comes Into Picture

Create the bucket again with the UpdateReplacePolicy attribute.

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: "2010-09-09"
Resources:
  MyS3Bucket:
    Type: AWS::S3::Bucket
    Properties:
      BucketName: updatereplacepolicygyansangrah1
    UpdateReplacePolicy: Retain

Once the updatereplacepolicygyansangrah1 bucket is created, update the template using the following template.

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: "2010-09-09"
Resources:
  MyS3Bucket:
    Type: AWS::S3::Bucket
    Properties:
      BucketName: updatereplacepolicygyansangrah2
    UpdateReplacePolicy: Retain

Output

Picture showing the bucket updatereplacepolicygyansangrah1 is retained UpdateReplacePolicy equal to retain

Posted By -	Karan Gupta

Posted On -	Sunday, March 16, 2025

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