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What are the pros and cons of using spot instances for production workloads?

Asked on Oct 26, 2025

Answer

Spot instances offer a cost-effective way to run production workloads by taking advantage of unused cloud capacity at reduced prices, but they come with the trade-off of potential interruptions. Understanding their benefits and limitations helps in deciding their suitability for specific applications.

Example Concept: Spot instances are ideal for fault-tolerant and flexible workloads due to their lower cost, but they can be interrupted with little notice. This makes them suitable for batch processing, stateless applications, or distributed systems that can handle interruptions. To mitigate risks, use strategies like checkpointing, maintaining a buffer of on-demand instances, or leveraging auto-scaling groups to replace interrupted instances automatically.

Additional Comment:

Spot instances can reduce costs significantly compared to on-demand instances.
They are not suitable for critical workloads that require high availability without interruptions.
Implementing a mixed-instance strategy can balance cost savings with reliability.
Use cloud provider tools to monitor and manage spot instance interruptions effectively.

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Ask any question about Cloud Computing here... and get an instant response.

What are the pros and cons of using spot instances for production workloads?

Asked on Oct 26, 2025

Answer

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