4 ms·

Just curious how he got $0.11/hr for a "spot" instance of g2.2xlarge? Amazon's "on demand" pricing of that config w/ Windows on their website is $0.767/hr.

abtinf 11y ago
On-demand and spot prices are two different things. Keep looking at the pricing page and you will see. Spot prices fluctuate constantly and your instance is auto-killed when the spot prices rises above the maximum price you are willing to pay.
- skellington 11y ago
  Thanks, I wasn't aware of the spot pricing (never scrolled that far down the very long pricing page :) I'm not sure that I understand the economics of the spot option from Amazon's POV since it seems that a person who needed persistent servers could set their spot max price at the same price as an on-demand instance and always be ahead by doing it that way (with the caveat that there would be a short interruption if forced to switch to on-demand). For someone who needs cheapest possible compute power with a flexible schedule, spot arbitrage makes sense of course.
  - jon-wood 11y ago
    If you need steady state you'll almost always be better off paying for reserved instances rather than a near hourly rate spot price.
  - wxs 11y ago
    > it seems that a person who needed persistent servers could set their spot max price at the same price as an on-demand instance and always be ahead by doing it that way Not if you need persistence: the spot price can go above the on-demand price. So if you set your max spot price to the on-demand price your instance might get terminated.
  - hexedpackets 11y ago
    > set their spot max price at the same price as an on-demand instance People have played that game before and lost. Spot pricing can and has gone above the on-demand prices. It is normally a great way to save money, but there's no way to avoid the possibility of having your instance terminated. If that's not something you've built around then you have to stick to on-demand (or reserved).
infecto 11y ago
Sounds about right. For example, Oregon 2b averages around $0.18/hour. Different AZs are drastically different. Some of them hover around the demand price while others are rock bottom.
- glogla 11y ago
  Can you say how the prices in Frankfurt look like? It won't show unless you have AWS account.
  - jfreax 11y ago
    eu-central-1a: $0.0938 eu-central-1b: $0.1053

abtinf 11y ago

On-demand and spot prices are two different things. Keep looking at the pricing page and you will see. Spot prices fluctuate constantly and your instance is auto-killed when the spot prices rises above the maximum price you are willing to pay.

skellington 11y ago
Thanks, I wasn't aware of the spot pricing (never scrolled that far down the very long pricing page :) I'm not sure that I understand the economics of the spot option from Amazon's POV since it seems that a person who needed persistent servers could set their spot max price at the same price as an on-demand instance and always be ahead by doing it that way (with the caveat that there would be a short interruption if forced to switch to on-demand). For someone who needs cheapest possible compute power with a flexible schedule, spot arbitrage makes sense of course.
- jon-wood 11y ago
  If you need steady state you'll almost always be better off paying for reserved instances rather than a near hourly rate spot price.
- wxs 11y ago
  > it seems that a person who needed persistent servers could set their spot max price at the same price as an on-demand instance and always be ahead by doing it that way Not if you need persistence: the spot price can go above the on-demand price. So if you set your max spot price to the on-demand price your instance might get terminated.
- hexedpackets 11y ago
  > set their spot max price at the same price as an on-demand instance People have played that game before and lost. Spot pricing can and has gone above the on-demand prices. It is normally a great way to save money, but there's no way to avoid the possibility of having your instance terminated. If that's not something you've built around then you have to stick to on-demand (or reserved).

infecto 11y ago

Sounds about right. For example, Oregon 2b averages around $0.18/hour. Different AZs are drastically different. Some of them hover around the demand price while others are rock bottom.

glogla 11y ago
Can you say how the prices in Frankfurt look like? It won't show unless you have AWS account.
- jfreax 11y ago
  eu-central-1a: $0.0938 eu-central-1b: $0.1053