# Quick Start: Use CloudFormation to get started with CloudWatch Logs
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AWS CloudFormation enables you to describe and provision your AWS resources in JSON format. The advantages of this method include being able to manage a collection of AWS resources as a single unit, and easily replicating your AWS resources across Regions.

When you provision AWS using CloudFormation, you create templates that describe the AWS resources to use. The following example is a template snippet that creates a log group and a metric filter that counts 404 occurrences and sends this count to the log group. 

```
"WebServerLogGroup": {
    "Type": "AWS::Logs::LogGroup",
    "Properties": {
        "RetentionInDays": 7
    }
},

"404MetricFilter": {
    "Type": "AWS::Logs::MetricFilter",
    "Properties": {
        "LogGroupName": {
            "Ref": "WebServerLogGroup"
        },
        "FilterPattern": "[ip, identity, user_id, timestamp, request, status_code = 404, size, ...]",
        "MetricTransformations": [
            {
                "MetricValue": "1",
                "MetricNamespace": "test/404s",
                "MetricName": "test404Count"
            }
        ]
    }
}
```

This is a basic example. You can set up much richer CloudWatch Logs deployments using CloudFormation. For more information about template examples, see [Amazon CloudWatch Logs Template Snippets](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/quickref-cloudwatchlogs.html) in the *AWS CloudFormation User Guide*. For more information about getting started, see [Getting Started with AWS CloudFormation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/GettingStarted.html) in the *AWS CloudFormation User Guide*.