All terms
Glossary
Spot instances
Spare capacity that AWS sells at up to 90 percent off and can reclaim at short notice.
The discount is real and so is the condition: AWS announces reclamation a few minutes ahead. Anything interruptible fits, so batch processing, image work, test runs, analytics jobs.
In Kubernetes environments spot nodes can be mixed with regular ones, keeping base load stable while peaks are absorbed cheaply.
How you notice it
- There are workloads that may be interrupted and restarted.
- Batch jobs or test runs make up a visible share of the bill.
- Baseline capacity is already covered by commitments.
Frequently asked
What happens when AWS reclaims a spot instance?
You get a two minute warning. Whatever runs there must checkpoint and resume elsewhere. Applications without that ability lose more compute time than the discount is worth.