We saw in the last section how CloudFormation was able to update resources as we update our template. The same goes when you want to remove a CloudFormation stack and its resources. In a couple of clicks, you can delete your template and the various resources that got created at launch time. From a best practice standpoint, it is highly recommended to always use CloudFormation to make changes to your resources previously initialized with CloudFormation, including when you don't need your stack anymore.

Deleting a stack is very simple; you should proceed as follows:

1. Open the CloudFormation web console in your browser (https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation).
2. Select the HelloWorld stack that we previously created.
3. Click on Action, and then Delete Stack.

As always, you will be able to track completion in the Events tab:

CloudFormation has a unique place in the AWS ecosystem. Most architectures as complex as they are can be described and managed through CloudFormation, allowing you to keep tight control over your AWS resources creation. While CloudFormation does a great job at managing the creation of resources, it doesn't always make things easy, especially when you want to make simple changes on services such as EC2. Because CloudFormation doesn't keep track of the state of the resources once they are launched, the only reliable way to update an EC2 instance, for example, is to recreate a new instance and swap it with the existing instance once the new instance is ready. This creates a somewhat immutable design (assuming that you don't run any extra commands once the instance is created). This may be an attractive architecture choice and, in some cases, it may get you a long way, but you may wish to have the ability to have long-running instances where you can quickly and reliably make changes through a controlled pipeline like we did with CloudFormation. This is what configuration management systems excel at.