Detecting Drift in AWS CloudFormation Stacks

Learn how to detect drift in the Code Ocean stack.

A drift report shows which resources have been manually modified or deleted. This report is especially useful when the system is in a critical or unknown state (e.g. when resources appear to be missing or the system is broadly malfunctioning).

Although not all findings are relevant and some AWS resource types aren’t supported, the report can provide valuable time-saving insights which, together with a log bundle, allow the support team to provide a solution faster.

Steps to trigger drift detection:

1. Go to AWS Console → CloudFormation → Stacks

2. Select the Code Ocean stack

3. Click on Stack actions → Detect drift → Stack actions → View drift results

4. Wait for the drift detection to complete (DRIFTED status)

5. filter by DELETED, then by MODIFIED.

For more details about a modified resource, select it and click View drift details.

Below is an example of a drift report from a Code Ocean stack: