I don't see a link to any logs, maybe i have to set that up? Not sure why it wouldn't be on by default.

it helps to look at the resources status too, but I'm sure you knew that already

Maybe try https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/cloudformation/describe-stack-events.html? I haven't tried this before

Thanks @U032ZPU44KD! we tried describe-stack-events and it didn't give a more specific reasons then "resource failed to create" when we were hoping for "resource failed to create bc.... x"

Cloud trail events sometimes has more

Does that require setup? I don't see anything from the cloudformation browser console that looks like a link to cloud trail.

Cloudtrail events has everything that happens in an account. You can make custom trails and setup logging to cloudwatch etc, but you don't need it here. Between the stack events, the status of the resources in the stack, and cloudtrail events I can usually piece together what happened to a stack. Sometimes I need to look at the failed resource directly, assuming it managed to create it.

Thanks a lot for the response. 🙂 I'll want to automate enabling cloudtrail for everything then. And then turn it off after I'm done debugging. I can piece what happened together too, but I expect the stack trace to be available. If i can't get that, then i have a cloud service startup idea. 😆