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Spot instances are used to sell spare capacity. This means the provider is basically selling computing power on machines that have to stay turned on, to allow f
by ladypine 15y ago
Spot instances are used to sell spare capacity. This means the provider is basically selling computing power on machines that have to stay turned on, to allow for flexibility in accommodating needs of deals with better SLAs (e.g., on-demand and reserved instances). Hence, the natural reserve price would not be the cost of powering a server, but rather the difference between the cost of an idle and active server.
- wmf 15y agothe natural reserve price would not be the cost of powering a server, but rather the difference between the cost of an idle and active server. For an idle slot in a partially-allocated server, I would agree, and I think that cost is near zero. But EC2 may also have more completely idle servers than are necessary for SLAs and thus can be powered down.
- ladypine 15y agoMy guess is that those servers, which can be powered down, are not offered as spot instances at all. A spot instance usually pays less than half the price of an on-demand, for the same power consumption. Offering servers that can be shut down at half the price would cannibalize the main deals the provider offers, and thus make no sense.