Performing resource operations - Cloud Control API
PrerequisitesSpecifying credentialsEnsuring requests are uniqueConsiderations
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Performing resource operations

Use Amazon Cloud Control API to do or other command verb construction create, read, update, remove, and list (-L) operations on resources in your Amazon Web Services account.

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Prerequisites for using resources with Cloud Control API

To provision a specific resource using Cloud Control API, that resource type must support Cloud Control API and be available for use in your Amazon Web Services account.

For information about using resource types, see Using resource types.

Specifying credentials for Cloud Control API

As part of performing operations on Amazon resources on your behalf, Cloud Control API must make calls to the underlying Amazon services that actually provision those resources. To do so, Cloud Control API requires the necessary credentials to access those services. There are two ways for you to enable Cloud Control API to acquire those credentials:

  • User credentials

    By default, Cloud Control API creates a temporary session using your Amazon user credentials, and uses that to make any necessary calls to downstream Amazon services. This session lasts up to 24 hours, after which any remaining calls to Amazon by Cloud Control API will fail.

  • Service role credentials

    You can also specify a service role for Cloud Control API to assume during a resource operation, when you make the resource request. Among other advantages, specifying a service role enables Cloud Control API to make calls to underlying Amazon services for up to 36 hours.

    To use a service role, specify the RoleArn parameter of the resource operation request.

    Because the Cloud Control API actions are part of the Amazon CloudFormation service, the service role you specify is assumed by the CloudFormation service (cloudformation.amazonaws.com). For more information, see Amazon CloudFormation service role in the Amazon CloudFormation User Guide.

The permissions required for each resource handler are defined in the handlers section of that resource type's schema. For more information about viewing the resource schema, see .Viewing resource type schemas The handlers section is defined in the resource type definition schema.

Ensuring resource operation requests are unique when using Cloud Control API

As a best practice, we strongly recommend you specify an idempotency token with create, delete, and update resource operation requests. Preferably, specify a token that will be unique for every request, such as an universally unique identifier (UUID). Such a token ensures requests can be disambiguated in cases where a request must be retried.

The create-resource, delete-resource, and update-resource operations all take a client-token parameter, which can be set to an idempotency token.

Considerations when using Cloud Control API

We recommend that you take the following service behavior into account when performing resource operations using Cloud Control API:

  • Cloud Control API performs each resource operation individually and independently of any other resource operations.

  • A single resource operation request to Cloud Control API might actually consist of multiple calls to the underlying service that provisions the resource. Because of this, a resource request might fail when only partially completed, resulting in only some of the requested changes being applied to the resource.

  • If a resource operation fails at any point, Cloud Control API doesn't roll back the resource to its previous state.

  • You can only perform one resource operation at a time on a given resource using Cloud Control API. However, the resource can still be operated on directly, through the underlying service that provisioned it. We strongly recommend against this approach because it may lead to unpredictable behavior.