How do I use an AWS CloudFormation Templates or Azure Resource Manager Templates in a CAT?

Background

You're currently using AWS CloudFormation Templates and/or Azure Resource Manager Templates for provisioning resources and want to know what kind of support RightScale offers for these cloud-native templates.

Answer

RightScale Plugins allow you to extend the RightScale platform to support resources on cloud providers and 3rd party APIs. RightScale has published Plugins for both AWS CloudFormation Templates and ARM Templates, thus allowing AWS CloudFormation Stacks and Azure Deployments to be declared as resources in CATs. This enables you to bring your existing, cloud-native templates (CloudFormation Templates, ARM Templates) to RightScale, and simply wrap them in a CAT to deliver pre-built use cases. These resources can then be provisioned, maintained, and decommissioned, just like any other CAT resource.