THIS WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON MY TUMBLR ON FEB 25, 2011. I forgot I had a Tumblr account. I recently logged in (in light of the acquisition by Automattic), found some old posts, and I'm republishing them exactly as they were with zero modifications.
CloudFormation: The Big Picture
Amazon announced CloudFormation to the public yesterday, and while the general opinion I could glean from various sources shows that people are excited about this new technology, many are still unsure what it is and how it fits into their current cloud workflow. I feel as though I have a firm grasp on CloudFormation and will attempt to answer some questions here.
Note: I'm definitely not a representative of Amazon in any way, and anything here is simply my educated opinion on the matter.