Using Cloud Formation to Create a Stack

This is still an experiment.  The basic idea is to declare all pieces of our stack using a cloud formation template so we can spin up a complete set of resources on demand.  Here are some notes:

• Editing a big giant block of JSON to describe our complete stack is pretty nuts.  Installing the JSON Eclipse Editor helps a bit with formatting issues. (Download and drop in eclipse/dropins folder). Do Edit > Format Text in Eclipse to make the JSON (somewhat) human readable.
• You can get the configuration template in JSON format off an existing beanstalk instance using the command line tools as described in AWS forum.  Key is the -j flag to get JSON back from AWS.
• Looks like the Python library boto has no support at all for Cloud Formation yet.  If you want to use the Java libraries, you need to make sure you are up to the latest AWS SDK 1.2.  The easiest way to get this is through the AWS for Eclipse plug-in through normal Eclipse update functionality.  I haven't found a way to get valid JSON back though the Java library when describing objects though.
• The prototype Cloud Former tool is a web application that lets you create a Cloud Formation template based on other resources deployed in your Amazon account.  Still not formally released yet.
• Working Synapse and some examples templates from Amazon are checked into SVN under configuration/deployment/amazon