Spot Instances

Take advantage of unused EC2 capacity in AWS.
They can have up to a 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices.

Concepts

Spot Instance pool:
- A set of unused EC2 instances with the same properties, such as the same instance type, operating system, Availability Zone, and network platform.
Spot price:
- The current price of a Spot Instance per hour.
Spot Instance request:
- A request for a Spot Instance.
- The request provides the maximum price per hour that you are willing to pay for a Spot Instance.
- They can either be one-time or persistent (persistent means the request would keep replacing instances if it does not meet your specified target).
- Cancelling a spot request won't terminate instances.
  - To cancel a persistent request, first you would have to cancel the request, then terminate the instances.
Spot Instance interruption:
- EC2 terminates/stops your Spot Instance when the Spot price exceeds the maximum price for your request or capacity is no longer available.
- EC2 provides a Spot Instance interruption notice, which gives the instance a two-minute warning before it is interrupted.

Spot Fleets

A collection, or fleet, of Spot Instances, and optionally On-Demand Instances.
The Spot Fleet attempts to launch the number of Spot Instances and On-Demand Instances to meet the target capacity that you specified in the Spot Fleet request.
Spot Instance pool:
- A set of unused EC2 instances with the same properties, such as the same instance type, operating system, Availability Zone, and network platform.
Strategies:
- lowestPrice
  - The Spot Instances come from the pool with the lowest price.
  - This is the default strategy.
  - For cost optimization.
- diversified
  - The Spot Instances are distributed across all pools.
  - For highly available and long workloads.
- capacityOptimized
  - The Spot Instances come from the pool with optimal capacity for the number of instances that are launching.
  - For best performance.

Spot Blocks

These are spot Instances with a defined duration.
They are designed not to be interrupted and will run continuously for the duration you select.
- Makes them ideal for jobs that take a finite time to complete, such as batch processing, encoding and rendering, modelling and analysis, and continuous integration.

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Last updated 4 years ago

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Concepts

Spot Instance pool:

A set of unused EC2 instances with the same properties, such as the same instance type, operating system, Availability Zone, and network platform.

Spot price:

The current price of a Spot Instance per hour.

Spot Instance request:

A request for a Spot Instance.
The request provides the maximum price per hour that you are willing to pay for a Spot Instance.
They can either be one-time or persistent (persistent means the request would keep replacing instances if it does not meet your specified target).
Cancelling a spot request won't terminate instances.
- To cancel a persistent request, first you would have to cancel the request, then terminate the instances.

Spot Instance interruption:

EC2 terminates/stops your Spot Instance when the Spot price exceeds the maximum price for your request or capacity is no longer available.
EC2 provides a Spot Instance interruption notice, which gives the instance a two-minute warning before it is interrupted.

Spot Fleets

A collection, or fleet, of Spot Instances, and optionally On-Demand Instances.

The Spot Fleet attempts to launch the number of Spot Instances and On-Demand Instances to meet the target capacity that you specified in the Spot Fleet request.

Spot Instance pool:

A set of unused EC2 instances with the same properties, such as the same instance type, operating system, Availability Zone, and network platform.

Strategies:

lowestPrice
- The Spot Instances come from the pool with the lowest price.
- This is the default strategy.
- For cost optimization.
diversified
- The Spot Instances are distributed across all pools.
- For highly available and long workloads.
capacityOptimized
- The Spot Instances come from the pool with optimal capacity for the number of instances that are launching.
- For best performance.

Spot Blocks

These are spot Instances with a defined duration.

They are designed not to be interrupted and will run continuously for the duration you select.

Makes them ideal for jobs that take a finite time to complete, such as batch processing, encoding and rendering, modelling and analysis, and continuous integration.