How to name an Auto Scaling Group in a CloudFormation template?

Question

I have a CloudFormation template that creates an auto scaling group (among other things). How can I give the auto scaling group a name in the template?
The AWS docs do not mention anything (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-properties-as-group.html), and its possible to do if I create it trough the AWS website. (I need to give a group a name because I need to find this group from another script)

EDIT: I've tried to add a tag called "Name", but it still does not work:

"Resources": {
"MyServerGroup" : {
  "Type" : "AWS::AutoScaling::AutoScalingGroup",
  "Properties" : {
    "AvailabilityZones" : { "Fn::GetAZs" : ""},
    "LaunchConfigurationName" : { "Ref" : "LaunchConfig" },
    "MinSize" : { "Ref" : "ServerCount" },
    "MaxSize" : { "Ref" : "ServerCount" },
    "DesiredCapacity" : { "Ref" : "ServerCount" },
    "LoadBalancerNames" : [ { "Ref" : "ElasticLoadBalancerName" } ],
    "Tags" : [ {
      "Key" : "Name",
      "Value" : { "Ref" : "ServerName" },
      "PropagateAtLaunch" : "true"
    } ]
  },
  "CreationPolicy": {
    "ResourceSignal": {
      "Count": "2",
      "Timeout": "PT5M"
    }
  }
},

The name column in the AWS console still displays something like "MyStackName-MyServerGroup-345MH3NF34N7E", and in the Tags field I can see the key-value pair for the Name tag that I added.

Answer 1

CloudFormation now has a property called: AutoScalingGroupName

Description: "The name of the Auto Scaling group. Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 255. Must follow the following pattern: [\u0020-\uD7FF\uE000-\uFFFD\uD800\uDC00-\uDBFF\uDFFF\r\n\t]*" Type: String Required: No

see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-properties-as-group.html

Answer 2

Create a tag with for the ASG with the key "Name" (the capital N is important). This will be used for the Name column in the console.

Note that you could find the ASG by searching for a well known tag other than Name from your other script. Tags are a great way to search for resources.

Answer 3

Clearly from the AWS Tagging Auto Scaling Groups and Instances doc, you can not set value of tag prefixed with aws:.

I guess, value you have read from console "MyStackName-MyServerGroup-345MH3NF34N7E" is of tag aws:autoscaling:groupName. So its obvious you can not set Auto Scaling Group Name in CloudFormation Template.

Unfortunately, from my experience, you can not pass tag value in CloudFormation template. But best, you can use AWS SDK to read tag value from launched EC2 instances.

Answer 4

The attribute "AutoscalingGroupName" within AWS::AutoScaling::AutoScalingGroup entity works.

Sample template :

"Autoscaling1"
{
"Type" : "AWS::AutoScaling::AutoScalingGroup",
"Properties" : {
  "AutoScalingGroupName" : String,
  "AvailabilityZones" : [ String, ... ],
  "Cooldown" : String,
  "DesiredCapacity" : String,
  "HealthCheckGracePeriod" : Integer,
  "HealthCheckType" : String,
  "InstanceId" : String,
  "LaunchConfigurationName" : String,
  "LifecycleHookSpecificationList" : [ LifecycleHookSpecification, ... ],
  "LoadBalancerNames" : [ String, ... ],
  "MaxSize" : String,
  "MetricsCollection" : [ MetricsCollection, ... ],
  "MinSize" : String,
  "NotificationConfigurations" : [ NotificationConfiguration, ... ],
  "PlacementGroup" : String,
  "Tags" : [ TagProperty, ... ],
  "TargetGroupARNs" : [ String, ... ],
  "TerminationPolicies" : [ String, ... ],
  "VPCZoneIdentifier" : [ String, ... ]
 }
}     

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-properties-as-group.html#cfn-autoscaling-autoscalinggroup-autoscalinggroupname

Answer 5

Although naming the AutoScalingGroup (ASG) doesn't seem to be possible, you can export the name assigned when the ASG is created by the CloudFormation (CF) template by using the following:

  Outputs:
  AutoScalingGroupName:
    Description: "AutoScalingGroup Name"
    Export:
      Name:
        Fn::Sub: ${AWS::StackName}-autoscalinggroupname
    Value: { Ref: AutoScalingGroup }

The ASG name can then be used in other CF templates, although this is perhaps not what the OP means by "find this group from another script".