What if I told you that you can reduce your cloud costs by up to 90%—without rewriting your application? Yes, that’s what Spot Instances are for.
What Exactly is a Spot Instance?.
To understand Spot Instances, Lets consider a scene, think of AWS like an airline. Sometimes, seats go unsold, and the airlines offer those seats at lower prices due to unsold capacity. Spot Instances are AWS’s unsold capacity sold at a discount.
Spot Instances are essentially the same as regular EC2 Instances, but they are significantly cheaper because you are using AWS's extra, unused servers. The probelm is that these instances can be taken away at any time. However, don’t worry; it’s not as scary as it sounds.
When Should You Use Spot Instances?
So, when should you use a Spot Instance for your application, Right?
Spot Instances are amazing, but they are not right for everyone. Here are some scenarios where using them makes sense:
- Development and Test Environments: Use Spot Instances for developing and testing applications.
- CI/CD Pipelines: Run build and test jobs cost-effectively, mainly for open-source.
- Batch Jobs: Execute batch processing jobs at lower costs, particularly for open-source or internal applications.
- Containers with Fargate or ECS: If you are using containers, Spot Instances can be a smart way to save costs.
👋 One Last Thing:
Using Spot Instances is not just about saving money; it also encourages to think about scalability, resilience, and automation—core skills for any solution architect or DevOps engineer. If you have time, try creating a Spot Instance to see how it work, and then imagine replacing ten of your servers with it.
If you want to know more, you can check the references below.
References:
- Spot Instance Pricing Page
- EC2 Spot vs. On-Demand Explained (AWS Docs)
- YouTube: Spot Instances in Production – Good Idea?
That`s it for this now! I'm happy you made it to the end - thank you so much for your support. If you have any queries or opinions, you can connect with me on x.
Top comments (0)