This article discusses what spot instances are and how to use them to slash your cloud bill. Here you’ll find the 6 key steps you need to take.

You may already know what the catch is.

The cloud provider can pull the plug at any time with as little as 30-second notice.

We’re not saying that you should opt to reserve VM instances instead, far from it. Reserved capacity is a path to vendor lock-in and paying more in the long term.

There is a way that you can use spot instances effectively, even for production workloads.

Read this guide to learn how to handle spot instances and make the financial team pleasantly surprised when they see the bill.

Why Are Spot Instances So Tricky?

Interruptions Are Inevitable

CSPs offer their unused capacity at prices that offer savings up to 90%. The only catch is that they can pull the plug with short notice, from 2 minutes to as little as 30 seconds. This is why spot instances are more difficult to manage for production workloads.

Since you bid on spare computing resources, you have no guarantee on how long these capacities will stay available. Interruptions are bound to happen. That’s why you shouldn’t be using them for workloads that can’t tolerate them and are critical.

#aws #ec2 #gcp #cost optimization #azure