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Hi Vijay, without a paid support plan, I think you still have three options:
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Provide your Stack ARN and Region in this thread: AWS employees monitor re:Post and can escalate stuck stacks to the service team. They cannot assist without the exact Stack ARN.
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Open a free Billing Support Case: Basic tier accounts can open billing tickets. Explain that a stuck stack prevents resource cleanup and you want to ensure no unexpected charges occur. Support often reroutes these cases to the technical team.
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Verify the IAM Service Role: If you used a custom IAM Role to create the stack and deleted it manually, CloudFormation might be stuck due to lost permissions. Recreating the role with the exact same name and admin rights sometimes unblocks the process.
PS: Pergaps an AWS moderator can look into it…. Have in mind sharing the ARN in a public form is on your own risk!
This is an unusual situation where CloudFormation appears to have accepted the delete request but never actually began processing the individual resources. Based on the behavior you're describing, here are some insights and potential paths forward:
Understanding the Issue:
When CloudFormation can't delete resources, it typically generates DELETE_FAILED events for specific resources with detailed error messages. However, in your case, the absence of any resource-level events suggests CloudFormation may not have initiated the actual deletion workflow for the stack's resources. This can happen in rare edge cases, particularly when:
- The stack is in an inconsistent internal state
- Resources were manually deleted outside CloudFormation before the stack deletion was attempted
- There's an underlying service issue preventing CloudFormation from processing the deletion
What You've Already Tried:
The approaches you've attempted (FORCE_DELETE_STACK and --retain-resources) are typically effective for stuck deletions, but they require CloudFormation to be actively processing the stack. If CloudFormation hasn't begun evaluating individual resources, these commands may not trigger the expected behavior.
Next Steps:
Given that you've manually deleted the underlying resources and standard troubleshooting hasn't resolved the issue after two weeks, this situation likely requires intervention from AWS Support. They have access to internal stack state information and can investigate why CloudFormation isn't processing the deletion request.
You can add correspondence to your existing case through the AWS Support Center (https://console.aws.amazon.com/support/). If you don't currently have a support case open, you can create one there. Depending on your AWS Support plan, you may have access to faster response times for operational issues like this.
When contacting support, provide the stack name, region, and the specific symptoms you've described—particularly the lack of any resource-level events and the timeline of actions you've taken.
Sources
Automate deletion of AWS CloudFormation stacks and associated resources - AWS Prescriptive Guidance
Troubleshooting CloudFormation - AWS CloudFormation
Thanks for the explanation, Florian.
Unfortunately, I don't have an AWS Support plan. Since this appears to be a CloudFormation service-side issue (the stack never progresses beyond the initial DELETE_IN_PROGRESS event and no resource-level events are generated), is there any mechanism for AWS to investigate or escalate this through re:Post? Or is opening an AWS Support case the only available path?
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Thanks for the suggestion, Florian. I appreciate your help.
I've opened a Billing Support case and included the details you mentioned. Hopefully, they can investigate the issue or route it to the CloudFormation team if needed.
Thanks again!