Especially if you have a lot of accounts this can happen.

An easy way to speed things up is by specifying the command-line argument --max-concurrent-stacks 10 where 10 is the number of stacks to run in concurrently.

Another way to speed things up is to run tasks in parallel this can be done with the argument --max-concurrent-tasks 10. This, however, has the side-effect that the logging might be somewhat harder to relate to a specific task (as it might be out of order).

Every AWS account needs a unique root email address, there is no way around this...

What you can do is to check whether your mail server allows you to append a '+' (plus sign) and another secondary name to your account to create new unique email addresses.

Email to there addresses will end up in the mailbox assigned to the alias before the plus sign and this will still be considered a valid and unique email address when creating a new AWS Account.

Example:If your email address is name@gmail.com you will receive email send to name+awsaccount1@gmail.com and name+awsaccount2@gmail.com to your inbox.

Mail servers that support this are gmail, aws workmail and hotmail.

Org-formation needs high privilege access to your master account. If you run org-formation manually it is wise to set up MFA.

I assume you have credentials set up in ~/.aws/credentials and this looks like (might well be called default):

[org-formation]
aws_access_key_id = AKIAxxxxxxxxx
aws_secret_access_key = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

This allows org-formation to assume the IAM User that corresponds to the access key and secret using the option --profile org-formation.

To enforce MFA you need to do the following:

1. Assign an MFA device to the IAM User in the console.
2. Create a role in your master account that has high privileged access and enforces the use of MFA. We call this MyOrgFormationRole.
3. Create a profile that refers to the MyOrgFormation. We call this profile org-formation-mfa.
4. Test whether MFA has been setup correctly by running org-formation describe-stacks --profile org-formation-mfa.
5. If step #4 was successful you can strip the IAM user you use from permissions other than the once it needs to assume MyOrgFormationRole.

Code snippets below:

1. Creating the MyOrgFormationRole Role (step #2) - execute with CloudFormation

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09'

Resources:
  MyOrgFormationRole:
    Type: AWS::IAM::Role
    Properties:
      RoleName: MyOrgFormationRole
      ManagedPolicyArns:
      - 'arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AdministratorAccess'
      AssumeRolePolicyDocument:
        Version: '2012-10-17'
        Statement:
        - Effect: Allow
          Principal:
            AWS: !Sub 'arn:aws:iam::${AWS::AccountId}:root'
          Action: sts:AssumeRole
          Condition:
            Bool:
              aws:MultiFactorAuthPresent: 'true'

2. Creating the profile org-formation-mfa (step #3) put in your ~/.aws/config file.Replace 000000000000 with your master account id.The value for mfa_serial needs to be the value you got when setting up MFA for your user

[profile org-formation-mfa]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::000000000000:role/MyOrgFormationRole
source_profile = org-formation
mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::000000000000:mfa/my-user

3. Expected output when executing a command that requires MFA (step 4):

\> org-formation describe-stacks --profile org-formation-mfa
�� Enter MFA code for arn:aws:iam::000000000000:mfa/my-user:
XXXXXX # here you type in the  put the MFA code
{ ...regular output } # if successful the command will execute

4. The minimum set of permissions for your userReplace 000000000000 with your master account id (or the complete ARN for your Role )

Sid: 'AssumeMFARole'
Action: 'sts:AssumeRole'
Effect: 'Allow'
Resource: 'arn:aws:iam::000000000000:role/MyOrgFormationRole'

Hope this helps

Accounts that are created have a root user but no password.

You can create a password using the 'Forgot password' process using the root email.

Note: Once you have created a password and used it consider throwing the password away. You are not supposed to log in using root anyway and storing your password somewhere could only lead to losing it. As we just figured out above you didn't need it in the first place.

Do bind an MFA on your root user! Find info under the IAM service section of the console

Needless to add? don't use a virtual MFA on the same device that has access to the email account used as RootEmail... this reduces your 'multi-factor' authentication to a single factor �� ��

If you remove an account from the organization it will not be deleted. Deleting accounts using API calls is not supported by AWS.

After running update the account that is removed from the organization will not be able to be part of organization bindings.

\> org-formation update ./examples/organization.yml --profile org-formation
OC::ORG::Account              | Development4Account           | Forget
OC::ORG::OrganizationalUnit   | DevelopmentOU                 | Detach Account (Development4Account)
OC::ORG::OrganizationalUnit   | DevelopmentOU                 | CommitHash

After running update-stacks any stack that was deployed to this account using org-formation will be deleted from the target account. Stacks that have been created by other means will not be affected.

Obviously: having a task file will do both update and update-stacks in the right sequence and you're done!

If you removed and account and want to re-add it:Just add it back to the organization.yml. Make sure you run update and update-stacks (or perform-tasks) and your account will participate in all bindings and the stacks will be re-deployed to the account.

As long as the account was not deleted in full org-formation will identify it by the RootEmail (or AccountId) attribute in the organization.yml

Renaming accounts is not possible using API's. You will have to log into the account as root to change the account name in AWS.

If you change the AccountName attribute in org-formation this will warn you about the above and will, when resolving references to the account, use the account name from the organization.yml file.

The logical name, just like with CloudFormation is how you refer to the account from within your templates. The logical account is also used as an identifier within org-formation.

If you rename an account, by its logical name, org-formation will first notice that the resource by the old logical name has gone and forget it. Later it will discover the new same account by its new logical name and match it with the physical account that already exists in AWS. It will match the two thus completing the rename.

No reason other than not running into this use-case so far.

Really happy to implement this based on someone elses use-case.