Cloud Computing Intermediate

What is Spot Instance?

Discounted cloud compute instances that use spare capacity at significantly lower prices but can be interrupted with short notice.

Spot instances (AWS) or preemptible VMs (GCP) offer 60-90% discounts by using unused cloud capacity. The trade-off is that the provider can reclaim instances with 2-minute notice when demand increases.

Ideal for fault-tolerant, stateless workloads: batch processing, CI/CD builds, data analysis, rendering, and distributed computing. Not suitable for databases or long-running stateful applications. Spot fleets and interruption handling strategies maximize savings safely.

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Related Terms

SaaS (Software as a Service)

A cloud delivery model where software applications are hosted and managed by a provider and accessed by users over the internet.

CDK (Cloud Development Kit)

A software development framework for defining cloud infrastructure using familiar programming languages instead of YAML or JSON templates.

The smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes, consisting of one or more containers that share storage, network, and lifecycle.

Kubernetes Service

An abstraction that provides a stable network endpoint for accessing a group of Pods, handling load balancing and service discovery.

IAM (Identity and Access Management)

A framework for managing digital identities and controlling who can access which cloud resources and services.

Cloud Load Balancer

A managed service that distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers to ensure high availability and optimal resource utilization.

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