What role does AWS CloudFormation serve in resource management?

AWS CloudFormation plays a significant role in resource management by automating the creation and management of AWS resources through the use of templates. CloudFormation allows you to define your infrastructure as code by creating a JSON or YAML template that describes the desired state of your AWS resources. This includes specifying the type of resources you want (like EC2 instances, VPCs, S3 buckets, etc.) and their configurations.

With CloudFormation, you can deploy and manage an entire stack of resources in a consistent and reproducible manner. This automation not only streamlines the provisioning process but also helps ensure that resources are set up uniformly according to predefined policies and structures, reducing the risk of human error.

Moreover, CloudFormation provides features like change sets, which allow you to preview changes before applying them, and stacks, which help manage resources collectively, making it easier to update or delete related resources together. This offers a powerful solution for managing complex environments while promoting best practices in infrastructure management.