Resource Teardown & Operational Verification

Teardown & Operational Summary

This section documents the planned resource teardown procedure, stack destruction workflow, cost management practices, and post-operational verification steps for the AWS cloud infrastructure (chrome-flashcard-axiza) under domains www.axiza.net and api.axiza.net.

Automated Resource Decommissioning Procedure

To prevent unnecessary billing and ensure total resource cleanup upon completion of workshop evaluation, the following teardown procedure is designed to be executed:

  1. Route 53 Custom Domains Record Cleanup: Remove the custom domain record sets (www.axiza.net CNAME and api.axiza.net Alias A-record) from Route 53 Hosted Zone axiza.net:

    # Remove canonical frontend domain www.axiza.net CNAME record
aws route53 change-resource-record-sets --hosted-zone-id Z1234567890ABC \
  --change-batch '{
    "Changes": [{
      "Action": "DELETE",
      "ResourceRecordSet": {
        "Name": "www.axiza.net",
        "Type": "CNAME",
        "TTL": 300,
        "ResourceRecords": [{"Value": "d123456789abcdef.amplifyapp.com"}]
      }
    }]
  }'

# Remove backend subdomain api.axiza.net Alias A-record mapping to API Gateway Regional endpoint
aws route53 change-resource-record-sets --hosted-zone-id Z1234567890ABC \
  --change-batch '{
    "Changes": [{
      "Action": "DELETE",
      "ResourceRecordSet": {
        "Name": "api.axiza.net",
        "Type": "A",
        "AliasTarget": {
          "HostedZoneId": "Z2FDTNDATAQYW2",
          "DNSName": "d-xxxx.execute-api.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com",
          "EvaluateTargetHealth": false
        }
      }
    }]
  }'

  2. Storage Purging Phase: Prior to CloudFormation stack deletion, all persistent JSON export objects within the private S3 export bucket are purged:

    aws s3 rm s3://<export-bucket-name> --recursive

  3. CloudFormation Stack Destruction: Executing the SAM CLI stack removal command deletes all provisioned resources defined within template.yaml:

    cd infra
sam delete --no-prompts

Decommissioned Infrastructure Inventory

Executing the automated stack destruction process will release and remove the following AWS cloud resources:

AWS Resource Resource Name / Pattern Action Taken
Route 53 Records www.axiza.net & api.axiza.net Delete CNAME record (www.axiza.net) and Alias A-record (api.axiza.net) in axiza.net hosted zone
AWS Amplify Amplify App (chrome-flashcard-axiza) Disassociate domain www.axiza.net and release frontend web host
API Gateway HttpApi (api.axiza.net) Terminate custom domain mapping and HTTP API endpoints
AWS Lambda ApiFunction (chrome-flashcard-axiza-*) Function, execution runtime, and IAM Execution Roles deleted
DynamoDB Tables UsersTable, FlashcardsTable, CategoriesTable Tables destroyed (PAY_PER_REQUEST On-Demand billing mode terminated)
Amazon S3 Private ExportBucket Private export bucket policies and storage containers removed
IAM Policies Inline SAM policies (DynamoDBCrudPolicy, S3CrudPolicy) Role policies detached and deleted

Post-Operational Verification & Auditing

Upon completion of the teardown command, post-cleanup verification is conducted using the AWS CLI to confirm complete resource deletion:

  1. CloudFormation Audit:

    aws cloudformation describe-stacks --stack-name chrome-flashcard-axiza --region ap-southeast-1

    Expected result: Stack with id chrome-flashcard-axiza does not exist (Confirms stack removal).

  2. DynamoDB Audit:

    aws dynamodb list-tables --region ap-southeast-1

    Expected result: Confirms zero remaining project-related table instances.

  3. CloudWatch Log Audit:

    aws logs describe-log-groups --log-group-name-prefix "/aws/lambda/chrome-flashcard" --region ap-southeast-1

    Expected result: Confirms deletion or retention expiration of log groups.

Conclusion & Operational Best Practices

The reproducible deployment and teardown process demonstrates the benefits of Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) via AWS SAM. By managing resources through a declarative template, developers maintain full control over cloud environments, enforce security policies, and ensure clean resource decommissioning without leaving orphan billing assets.