What Is Spot Instance
Spot instances (also known as bidding instances) are a new operational model for Baidu Cloud Compute (BCC) instances. They function the same as regular BCC instances, with prices fluctuating in real-time based on market supply and demand, offering up to 90% cost savings compared to postpaid instance rates. Spot instances are available when there is sufficient inventory and may be interrupted or reclaimed during inventory shortages.
Spot instances are designed to provide cost-effective computing resources for short-term tasks and highly fault-tolerant applications. They are ideal for business scenarios characterized by being stateless, having strong fault tolerance, and high tolerance for interruptions.
Execution process of spot instance
The execution process of spot instance is shown below:
Related explanation
| Item | Description |
|---|---|
| Spot instances | A postpaid instance where users bid within a specific range. When the market price for the designated configuration is below the user’s bid and sufficient resources are available, customers can successfully create spot instances and be charged at the current market price. |
| Market price | Prices fluctuate between 10% and 100% of the listed price of the selected configuration, depending on inventory for the chosen instance specification and the user’s bid. Market prices update every 5 minutes. |
| Discount-related sections | Discounts apply exclusively to the cloud server and do not extend to other elements such as system disks, data disks, bandwidth, or paid images associated with the cloud server, which remain unaffected by bidding discounts. |
| Charge type | Spot instances are billed by the minute, with the market price at the time of creation serving as the per-minute rate. |
| Automatic bidding | If you purchase spot instances in this way, the latest market price will be matched in real time by default. Instances will only be released due to insufficient inventory |
| Maximum price | If you purchase spot instances using this method, the instance will be released if the market price exceeds your maximum acceptable price or if inventory becomes insufficient. |
| One-hour protection period | When a spot instance is successfully created, it enters a one-hour protection period. During the first hour, the instance will not be released due to market conditions. You can continue running your tasks during this time. After the protection period, we will check the market price and inventory for the instance specification every 5 minutes. If the market price surpasses your bid or resources are insufficient, the spot instance will be released. |
| Quota of spot instance | Each user can create a maximum of 20 spot instances in different regions. To request a quota increase, please submit a ticket. |
Release Recommendations
- Data Retention: You can create regular snapshots of your cloud disk and set up an automatic snapshot policy. For more details, see [Automatic Snapshots](link to documentation).
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Release Awareness: You can subscribe to preemptible instance release events through the Cloud Monitoring (BCM) console to receive a release notification 2 minutes in advance.
Plain Text1- **Steps:** 21. Log in to the Cloud Monitoring (BCM) console, go to **Alarm Management** > **Alarm Policies** > **Event Monitoring**, and click **Add Policy**.
2. Enter a policy name, select BCC under Product Type, choose BCC Preemptible Instance Release Event as the Event Name, and set up an alarm notification template. The system supports various notification methods, including email, SMS, phone, and callback URLs.
3. After completing the settings, click Finish.
Application scenarios
Spot instances are ideal for stateless applications like elastically scalable web services, image rendering, big data analysis, and large-scale parallel computing. The more your application emphasizes distribution, scalability, and fault tolerance, the greater your cost savings with spot instances.
You can deploy the following common services on spot instances:
- Real-time analysis service
- Big data service
- Geospatial survey and analysis service
- Image and media encoding service
- Scientific computing service
- Elastically scalable service site, web crawler service
- Image and media encoding service
- Test service
- Stateful applications (e.g., databases) are not recommended for spot instances, as the instance may be released during bidding failures, resulting in a loss of application state.
Usage restrictions
- Spot instances cannot be converted into prepaid instances.
- Spot instances do not support configuration modifications.
- Spot instances do not offer free charges for stopped instances.