AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – AssociateCost and Performance OptimizationEasy
A data engineering team is running a batch processing workload on Amazon EC2 instances. The workload can tolerate interruptions and has flexible start and end times. The team wants to significantly reduce compute costs while ensuring the jobs complete eventually. Which EC2 purchasing option should they primarily consider?
- ASpot Instances
- BDedicated Hosts
- COn-Demand Instances
- DReserved Instances
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. Spot Instances
Spot Instances allow you to bid on unused EC2 capacity, offering significant cost savings (up to 90% off On-Demand prices). They are ideal for fault-tolerant, flexible workloads that can be interrupted, such as batch processing, making them the best choice for this scenario.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Dedicated Hosts provide dedicated physical servers for compliance or licensing reasons and are typically the most expensive option.
- C. On-Demand Instances are the most expensive option, suitable for steady-state workloads that cannot be interrupted.
- D. Reserved Instances offer significant discounts for a committed term (1 or 3 years) but are for continuous, predictable workloads, not interruptible batch jobs.
EC2 Spot Instances
Unused EC2 capacity available at a significant discount (up to 90% off On-Demand prices), but instances can be interrupted by AWS.
- Ideal for fault-tolerant, flexible, and stateless workloads.
- Can be interrupted with a 2-minute warning.
- Cost-effective for batch processing, big data, and testing environments.
Memory trick: EC2 costs depend on commitment and flexibility.