Spot Instances — Complete Guide
Spot Instances — Complete Guide: free step-by-step lesson with examples, common mistakes, and interview tips — part of AWS Cloud Tutorial on Toolliyo Academy.
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AWS Cloud Tutorial · Lesson 25 of 100
Spot Instances
Core services → Projects
Core services · 1 — AWS basics · ~6 min · AWS — Compute Services
What is this?
Spot Instances use spare EC2 capacity at up to 90% discount. AWS can reclaim them with two minutes notice when capacity is needed.
Why should you care?
AwsVerse runs fault-tolerant batch analytics on Spot to cut compute bills for non-critical workloads.
See it live — copy this example
Run in AWS CloudShell / local AWS CLI v2, or follow the matching steps in the AWS Console (Free Tier).
aws ec2 request-spot-instances \
--spot-price '0.012' \
--instance-count 2 \
--type 'one-time' \
--launch-specification '{"ImageId":"ami-0abc","InstanceType":"t3.medium","KeyName":"lab"}'What happened?
- Requests Spot capacity at a max price.
- Use Spot Fleet or ASG with mixed instances policy for graceful interruption handling.
Practice next
- Identify interruptible jobs (render, ETL).
- Create ASG with Spot and On-Demand mix.
- Handle SIGTERM in app for checkpoint save.
- Set capacity-optimized Spot allocation strategy.
- Add Spot Instance interruption warning CloudWatch event.
Remember
Spot = cheap, interruptible. Good for batch and CI workers. Mix with On-Demand for baseline.
AwsVerse ETL savings
Nightly 500 GB transform tolerates retries.
Outcome: Spot Fleet cuts batch compute cost 70% vs On-Demand.
Interview prep for this lesson
Practice these questions aloud after reading—each links to a full structured answer.
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