What is a common use for AWS CloudFormation?

AWS CloudFormation is primarily used for creating and managing complex application architectures in a consistent and repeatable manner. It allows users to define their infrastructure as code through templates written in YAML or JSON. This infrastructure can include a wide variety of AWS resources such as EC2 instances, RDS databases, S3 buckets, and much more.

By using CloudFormation, developers and system administrators can automate the entire process of resource provisioning and management, which greatly simplifies the deployment of complex applications that may require multiple interdependent resources. With the ability to version control these templates, teams can ensure that environments are consistent regardless of where they are deployed, which is a significant advantage in both development and production settings. Additionally, CloudFormation can create and manage stacks, allowing teams to manage lifecycle operations such as creation, update, and deletion of resources in a coordinated way.

Other options such as database backups, load balancing traffic, and monitoring resource usage represent different functionalities within the AWS ecosystem but do not align with the primary purpose of CloudFormation, which is focused on infrastructure as code for building application architectures.