Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling now supports Instance Refresh in CloudFormation

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Instance Refresh in AWS CloudFormation

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling now supports Instance Refresh as a new AWS CloudFormation update policy. When you configure the new AutoScalingInstanceRefresh update policy and update properties that require instance replacement, CloudFormation automatically triggers an Instance Refresh.

With this integration, you can now access Instance Refresh capabilities including:

• Replace root volume for in-place updates
• Launch-before-terminate
• Alarm-based monitoring
• Checkpoints with bake time for controlled rollouts

Auto Scaling features such as scaling policies and health checks remain active throughout the update, so your service health is not at risk during deployments. Rollback is handled through CloudFormation stack rollback.

What to do

• Configure the AutoScalingInstanceRefresh update policy in your CloudFormation templates
• Update properties that require instance replacement to trigger Instance Refresh
• Monitor the update process using alarm-based monitoring and checkpoints
• Utilize rollback through CloudFormation stack rollback if needed

Source: AWS release notes

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