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> If your training process is interruptible and can be resumed at any time, costs will drop dramatically for AWS and Google (think $50 to $200) Noob question h

by aasasd 5y ago

> If your training process is interruptible and can be resumed at any time, costs will drop dramatically for AWS and Google (think $50 to $200) Noob question here: how does that work? Do you run the scripts in the hosting provider's downtime, with something like a nighttime rate? Or what magic is this?

qayxc 5y ago
It's basically special rates for instances that can be shutdown by the provider at any time. Google charges about 1/3rd of the usual hourly rate for such instances and AWS has a "market place" where you can bid for such instances (you name your max. price beforehand) and whenever an instance with your selected specs becomes available at that rate, you get it. Hyperscalers like Google and AWS basically have two types of machines/VMs for rent: instances reserved for long term commitment (think months to years) and on-demand. Naturally there's peak demand times in each region (usually during business hours) followed by periods of low demand so there's heavy fluctuation. Instead of just having their machines sitting idle while still costing money, they offer such idle resources at a heavily discounted rate, with the catch that as soon as regular demand rises again, your VM is being shut down to be offered at the normal hourly rate (you get notified so your script has some time to save its state). It's similar to what hotels do - discounted rates are available most of the time, but whenever there's a convention in town or on national holidays, you get kicked out and prices quadruple. Only with hyperscalers prices stay the same and you simply lose your cheap resource. The actual time at which VMs become available is pretty random. If you are ok with using multiple regions there's pretty much always instances available, though usually not for hours on end.
- aasasd 5y ago
  Quite interesting, thanks!

by aasasd 5y ago

qayxc 5y ago

It's basically special rates for instances that can be shutdown by the provider at any time. Google charges about 1/3rd of the usual hourly rate for such instances and AWS has a "market place" where you can bid for such instances (you name your max. price beforehand) and whenever an instance with your selected specs becomes available at that rate, you get it. Hyperscalers like Google and AWS basically have two types of machines/VMs for rent: instances reserved for long term commitment (think months to years) and on-demand. Naturally there's peak demand times in each region (usually during business hours) followed by periods of low demand so there's heavy fluctuation. Instead of just having their machines sitting idle while still costing money, they offer such idle resources at a heavily discounted rate, with the catch that as soon as regular demand rises again, your VM is being shut down to be offered at the normal hourly rate (you get notified so your script has some time to save its state). It's similar to what hotels do - discounted rates are available most of the time, but whenever there's a convention in town or on national holidays, you get kicked out and prices quadruple. Only with hyperscalers prices stay the same and you simply lose your cheap resource. The actual time at which VMs become available is pretty random. If you are ok with using multiple regions there's pretty much always instances available, though usually not for hours on end.

aasasd 5y ago
Quite interesting, thanks!