Amazon EC2 spot instances - is there a catch ?

Posted by gareth_bowles on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by gareth_bowles
Published on 2010-03-02T21:27:47Z Indexed on 2010/03/08 18:51 UTC
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I needed to start a new EC2 instance today and decided to try out the new spot instances, where you can reduce your instance cost by bidding on the maximum per-hour price you're prepared to pay. Since today's spot price was only 3.5c / hour, compared with 8.5c / hour for an on-demand instance, I was wondering: if I just bid a really high price, say 10c / hour, can I effectively be sure of getting a much cheaper long-running instance than an on-demand instance (since the spot instances are only charged by the current spot price) ?

I suppose it's theoretically possible for the spot price to go over the on-demand price, but as far as I can tell from the data on the AWS site, the spot price has always been well below that.

Amazon EC2 spot instances - is there a catch ?

Posted by gareth_bowles on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by gareth_bowles
Published on 2010-03-02T21:27:47Z Indexed on 2010/03/08 0:32 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 1123

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amazon-ec2

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ec2

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aws

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spot

I needed to start a new EC2 instance today and decided to try out the new spot instances, where you can reduce your instance cost by bidding on the maximum per-hour price you're prepared to pay. Since today's spot price was only 35c / hour, compared with 85c / hour for an on-demand instance, I was wondering: if I just bid a really high price, say $1 / hour, can I effectively be sure of getting a much cheaper long-running instance than an on-demand instance (since the spot instances are only charged by the current spot price) ?

I suppose it's theoretically possible for the spot price to go over the on-demand price, but as far as I can tell from the data on the AWS site, the spot price has always been well below that.

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