Spot instances represent a billing mode for Cloud Virtual Machine (CVM) services, where prices fluctuate in real time based on market supply and demand dynamics. Their most distinctive features include discounted sales and a system interruption mechanism. This means you can purchase instances at a certain discount, but the system may automatically reclaim these discounted instances. Once you purchase a spot instance, its use is virtually indistinguishable from that of a pay-as-you-go CVM instance, encompassing console operations, remote login, service deployment, and VPC association, among others. Compared to the pay-as-you-go billing mode, opting for spot instances can result in savings of up to 97% on instance costs.
System interruption due to insufficient supply: Currently, spot instances will not be interrupted due to the price reason, but may be interrupted if spot instances are in short supply. If the supply is insufficient, Tencent Cloud will randomly repossess allocated spot instances without retaining the instance data.
Available in almost all regions: Spot instances are available in almost all Tencent Cloud regions. The instance types supported by spot instances are the same as those supported by pay-as-you-go instances. For the latest regions and instance types supported, see Spot Instances.
Features
1. Cost-effectiveness
Spot instances are sold at a discount of up to 97% off the prices of pay-as-you-go instances.
Discount range: Spot instances are sold at a discount of up to 97% off the price of pay-as-you-go instances of the same specification.
Exclusions: The discount only applies to CVM CPU and memory. Other items including system disks, data disks, bandwidth, and paid images are not eligible for the discount.
Price fluctuations: When market supply and demand dynamics shift, prices will experience fluctuations.
2. System interruption mechanism
Unlike pay-as-you-go instances which can only be released by users, spot instances may be interrupted by the system due to price or resource availability reasons.
System interruption due to insufficient supply: Currently, spot instances will not be interrupted due to the price reason, but may be interrupted if spot instances are in short supply. If the supply is insufficient, Tencent Cloud will randomly repossess allocated spot instances without retaining the instance data.
Non-applicable Scenarios
As spot instances may be interrupted, their lifecycle is not under your control. Therefore, it is not recommended to run services with high stability requirement on a spot instance. For example:
Database services
Online and website services without load balancers
Core control nodes in a distributed architecture
Prolonged big data computing job lasting over 10 hours
Applicable Scenarios and Industries
Applicable scenarios
Big data computing
Online and website services with load balancers
Web crawler service
Other computing scenarios with fine granularity or support for checkpoint restart
Applicable industries
Gene sequencing and analysis
Drug crystal form analysis
Video transcoding and rendering
Financial and transaction data analysis
Image and multimedia processing
Science calculations, such as in geography and hydromechanics.
Limits and Restrictions
Quota limits: Tencent Cloud imposes certain limits on the quota of the CVM instance purchase quantity for each AZ, billing mode and instance type. If you need query each Instance's current quota and usage, please refer to Query Instance Purchase Quota.
Purchase limits: Vouchers are not available to spot instances.
Operation restriction：
You cannot upgrade and degrade the configuration of spot instances.
No charges when shut down is not supported for spot instances.
System reinstallation is not supported for spot instances.
You cannot expand the system disks and data disks of spot instances.
Best Practices
1. Splitting tasks
Split a prolonged task into fine-grained subtasks for lower possibility of interruption.
Use a big data suite such as EMR that comes with a splitting mechanism.
2. Using load balancers to ensure the stability of online and website services
Use load balancers, such as CLB, at the access layer.
Use a combination of some pay-as-you-go instances and many spot instances for backend resources.
Monitor the interruptions of spot instances and remove instances that are about to be interrupted from the CLB.
3. Using a computing scheduling mode that supports checkpoint restart
Store intermediate computing results on permanent storage products such as COS, CFS, and NAS.
Be aware of the instance metadata to monitor which instances are about to be interrupted and save the computing results within the retention period of 2 minutes.
Resume the last computing when a spot instance is started again.
