In this lesson, we’ll also explore performing tasks that go beyond the basic capabilities of CloudFormation templates, specifically when we want to install and configure services on resources, like EC2 instances, provisioned within the stack.

For this purpose, we’ll be using specialized scripts provided by AWS CloudFormation that we can execute inside the runtime of an EC2 instance to initialize, configure, and manage any packages and services on the EC2 instance.

Using CloudFormation helper scripts

The CloudFormation helper scripts help us initialize and configure any runtime-based AWS resources, like EC2 instances, that are provisioned using AWS CloudFormation templates. These helper scripts also allow us to manage the runtime even after it’s initialized. The following diagram lists all the helper scripts provided by CloudFormation:

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