Is there a way for cloudformation to query available zones for subnet creation?

Question

I have a cloudformation script that attempts to create a VPC, with one subnet per AZ.

When I run:

aws ec2 describe-availablity-zones

I get 4 zones returned:

"AvailabilityZones": [
    {
        "State": "available", 
        "RegionName": "us-east-1", 
        "Messages": [], 
        "ZoneName": "us-east-1a"
    }, 
    {
        "State": "available", 
        "RegionName": "us-east-1", 
        "Messages": [], 
        "ZoneName": "us-east-1b"
    }, 
    {
        "State": "available", 
        "RegionName": "us-east-1", 
        "Messages": [], 
        "ZoneName": "us-east-1c"
    }, 
    {
        "State": "available", 
        "RegionName": "us-east-1", 
        "Messages": [], 
        "ZoneName": "us-east-1d"
    }
 ]

However, when I try to create my stack, I get an error:

  "ResourceStatusReason": "Value (us-east-1a) for parameter availabilityZone
   is invalid. Subnets can currently only be created in the following 
   availability zones: us-east-1c, us-east-1b, us-east-1d.", 

I am specifying the AZ with

      "AvailabilityZone" : {
        "Fn::Select" : [ "0", { "Fn::GetAZs" : "" } ]
      },

Is there a way to check to see if the AZ is really available for the creation of a subnet?

Answer 1

This may not be helpful for the CLI Approach or your exact scenario - but with AWS Management Console this works smooth.

With the recent updates with the CloudFormation Parameters, you would be able pin-point the AZs pertaining to the specified AZs.

This would be much convenient during the DR / DR Drills and making the CFN template Region Independent.

"Parameters": {
    "SubnetAZ": {
      "Description": "Availability Zone of the Subnet",
      "Type": "AWS::EC2::AvailabilityZone::Name"
    }
}

More Information About the CloudFormation Parameters