Taking advantage of Spot instances to realize substantial cost savings is one of the benefits of selecting the cloud. Spot instances are a feature of AWS consisting of spare EC2 instances offered at a discount. The price of the instance changes in real-time based on demand. AWS users make a bid indicating the most they are willing to pay for the instance. If the Spot price is less than the bid, the user receives that instance. Big Data and Cost Benefits of Using Spot Instances Big data workloads can be bursty, with data teams needing to scale jobs at a moment’s notice. By incorporating Spot instances, data teams can better manage the cost of rapidly growing workloads. Since Spot instance prices are based on AWS users’ bids, using them leads to significant cost savings. When compared to On-Demand instances, users who utilize Spot instances can save up to 80% on the price, even for the same instance type. Challenges with Managing Spot Instances While Spot instances can save on cost, they require extensive time and resources to manage due to the following factors: Spot nodes can be reclaimed by AWS at any time, meaning job loss is possible. If demand […]