Spot Instances
Spare EC2 capacity offered at steep discounts that AWS can reclaim with short notice.
Spot Instances let customers use spare EC2 capacity at discounts that can reach up to 90% compared to On-Demand pricing, making them the lowest-cost EC2 purchasing option. AWS can reclaim a Spot Instance with a two-minute warning when capacity is needed elsewhere, so workloads must tolerate interruption gracefully — batch processing, big-data analysis, and containerized jobs are classic fits. The key exam distinction is between Spot, On-Demand, and Reserved Instances: On-Demand has no commitment and full availability; Reserved Instances offer predictable discounts in exchange for a one- or three-year commitment; Spot offers the deepest discount but no availability guarantee. Choosing Spot for a steady, latency-sensitive production service is a common CLF-C02 trap.
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