AWS CloudFormation reusing the existing resource when creating or deploying new template

Question

I am developing my CloudFormation template. I have an S3 bucket resource in my template with the following code.

StorageBucket:
    Type: AWS::S3::Bucket
    DeletionPolicy: Retain
    UpdateReplacePolicy: Retain
    Properties:
      BucketName: pathein-directory-storage
      AccessControl: PublicRead

As you can see I set the DeletionPolicy to Retain because I want to retain the Bucket and its data when the template is deleted. At some point, I explicitly deleted the template. But my S3 bucket was not deleted.

Now, I am trying to deploy my template again. But the deployment is failing because the bucket already exists with the same name. How can I figure my template to use the existing bucket if there is already one?

Answer 1

How can I figure my template to use the existing bucket if there is already one?

You have to import it into CFN as shown in:

• Importing existing resources into a stack

Luckily, AWS::S3::Bucket is one of the resources that are supported for the import operation.

You begin the procedure in the console when you Create stack with existing resources :