Cloud & Infrastructure Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Jan 7, 2026 4 min read

EC2 Launch Template Discipline

Launch templates standardise instance configuration. The discipline that keeps them current and used.

Required for ASGs

All ASGs use launch templates, not launch configurations. Launch configurations are deprecated.

Launch templates are versioned. New version per change; old versions retained for rollback.

IaC-managed: Terraform or CloudFormation defines templates. No click-built production templates.

Encrypted volumes always.

IMDSv2 required, hop-limit 1.

Detailed monitoring enabled.

Standard security group with restricted ingress.

Tag versions with change description. Searchable; auditable.

Deprecate old versions after migration. Clean up after rollout.

Quarterly review: versions in use vs available. Drift surfaces.

Per-environment templates. Prod, staging, dev share base; differ in tags and sizes.

Per-team customisations via overlays. Team A's template extends platform base.

Periodic compliance scan: ASGs using non-current versions.