AWS CloudFormation vs. AWS Systems Manager

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS CloudFormation
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
AWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators a way to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, provisioning and updating them in a predictable fashion. Use AWS CloudFormation’s sample templates or create templates to describe the AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters, required to run an application. Users don’t need to figure out the order for provisioning AWS services or the subtleties of making those dependencies work.…
$0
AWS Systems Manager
Score 7.1 out of 10
N/A
AWS Systems Manager allows users to centralize operational data from multiple AWS services and automate tasks across your AWS resources. With it, users can create logical groups of resources such as applications, different layers of an application stack, or production versus development environments. Systems Manager allows users to select a resource group and view its recent API activity, resource configuration changes, related notifications, operational alerts, software inventory, and patch…
$0.20
Per Million Calls
Pricing
AWS CloudFormationAWS Systems Manager
Editions & Modules
Free Tier - 1,000 Handler Operations per Month per Account
$0.00
Handler Operation
$0.0009
per handler operation
AppConfig
$0.20
Per Million Calls
OpsCenter
$2.97
Per 1,000 Items
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AWS CloudFormationAWS Systems Manager
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThere is no additional charge for using AWS CloudFormation with resource providers in the following namespaces: AWS::*, Alexa::*, and Custom::*. In this case you pay for AWS resources (such as Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing load balancers, etc.) created using AWS CloudFormation as if you created them manually. You only pay for what you use, as you use it; there are no minimum fees and no required upfront commitments. When you use resource providers with AWS CloudFormation outside the namespaces mentioned above, you incur charges per handler operation. Handler operations are create, update, delete, read, or list actions on a resource.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AWS CloudFormationAWS Systems Manager
Features
AWS CloudFormationAWS Systems Manager
Configuration Management
Comparison of Configuration Management features of Product A and Product B
AWS CloudFormation
8.2
2 Ratings
2% above category average
AWS Systems Manager
-
Ratings
Infrastructure Automation8.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated Provisioning8.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Parallel Execution8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Node Management7.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Logging7.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Version Control9.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Cloud Management
Comparison of Cloud Management features of Product A and Product B
AWS CloudFormation
-
Ratings
AWS Systems Manager
8.0
1 Ratings
9% below category average
Cloud Management Security00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Automation and Orchestration00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Cost Management00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Cloud Management Performance Monitoring00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Governance and Compliance00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Resource Management00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Systems Integration00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AWS CloudFormationAWS Systems Manager
Small Businesses
HashiCorp Terraform
HashiCorp Terraform
Score 8.8 out of 10
VMware Cloud Director
VMware Cloud Director
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10
IBM Turbonomic
IBM Turbonomic
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10
VMware Cloud Director
VMware Cloud Director
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AWS CloudFormationAWS Systems Manager
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(7 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS CloudFormationAWS Systems Manager
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
I still give it an 8 because it's one of those tools that just quietly does the heavy lifting for you but it can really test your patience when it breaks esp with deep nested stacks. It's perfect for projects where we need clean consistent environments every time. It's less ideal for quick experimental setups like new EC2 configs or Lambda permission tweaks.
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Amazon AWS
When you have a process running in aws that needs to copy files to group of instances as part of the process Installing software on a group of machines Adding Cloudwatch agent to instance.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • All resources can segregated based on stacks which provides greater visibility
  • A complete audit trail of what went wrong while deploying a particular resource
  • Automatically rollbacks if any service as part of CloudFormation results in an error
  • The UI tool is useful
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Amazon AWS
  • Copy files to a group of instance with particular tag
  • Enable CW agent and push metrics to CW
  • Easy to install software in a group of instances.
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • Error Description upon Failure Needs to be Improved.
  • Slow to create, delete or update.
  • Need to delete resources manually. It can ask before starting deletion whether to skip those resources or delete them.
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Amazon AWS
  • I would like to see the Search feature improved a bit more.
  • UI is little bit confusing initially
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Usability
Amazon AWS
It's easy enough to get a shared template & apply it. You don't even have to download-then-upload or copy-and-paste, a publicly-accessible url works.
Diving deeper, it has enough powerful capabilities to make the life of a platform / DevOps engineer bearable.
However, you need equally deep knowledge to troubleshoot issues, when they inevitably pop up. This is the same for all IaC technologies, as they are additional abstraction layers on top of the native API provided by the cloud providers.
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Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information. Management guide.For information copy of the original. The new virtual Cloning virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information
Read full review
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • + We can standup a VPC in minutes
  • - It took a lot of inital time to set up
  • + With logging/rollback, made testing much easier.
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Amazon AWS
  • Reduced team's time spent on EC2 management
  • Patch management
  • Remote access
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ScreenShots

AWS CloudFormation Screenshots

Screenshot of CloudFormation - How it works overviewScreenshot of CloudFormation - High level how it worksScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template exampleScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template inputs overview