Include the following in your manual tests:

  • Hitting AWS limits (for example, VPCs, Amazon EBS, Elastic IP addresses).
  • Invalid product licenses or operating system registration.
  • Inactive AWS Marketplace AMI subscriptions.
  • Stacks launched within the customer’s VPC that don’t use our NAT gateway (instance) or internet gateway. This becomes an issue when an operating system doesn’t recognize the instances and repository registrations fail, which causes downstream failures.
  • Stack deletion. Make sure that deleting a CREATE_COMPLETE stack succeeds in a single try and doesn’t display a DELETE_FAILED status message.
  • Template validation. Launch your templates in the AWS CloudFormation console to check parameters and test the customer experience. This review makes it easier to detect issues with parameter names, labels, defaults, and descriptions. For example, do the following:
    • If parameters appear in an Other parameters group in the console, they’re orphaned in the template. You’ll need to add these parameters to the appropriate group in the Metadata section of your template.
    • If you’ve defined default values that don’t comply with parameter constraints (AllowedValues or AllowedPatterns), the console displays an error message. Fix the default value, or revise the constraint.
    • The visual test pass also helps you identify cosmetic issues and inconsistencies, such as typos in parameter labels and descriptions, or truncated descriptions. Follow the guidelines in the Follow parameter naming standards section of this guide.
    • For more information about parameter design and defaults, refer to the Design your parameters section of this guide.