AWS October Webinar Series - Using Spot Instances to Save up to 90% off Your EC2 Bill

© 2015, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Boyd McGeachie
October 28th
, 2015
Using Spot Instances to Save
up to 90% off Your EC2 Bill

Spare capacity at scale
AWS has more than a
million active customers
in 190 countries.
Amazon EC2 instance
usage has increased 93%
YoY, comparing Q4 2014
and Q4 2013, not
including Amazon use.

“By using AWS Spot instances, we've been able to save 75% a month
simply by changing four lines of code. It makes perfect sense for saving
money when you're running continuous integration workloads or
pipeline processing.” - Matthew Leventi, Lead Engineer, Lyft
Why use Spot?
39 years of drug research re-processed, using over 80,000 cores, in 9
hours for $4,232Petabyte-Scale Data Pipelines with Docker, Luigi and Elastic Spot
Instances
$1

With Spot the rules are simple

Amazon EC2 Spot – in the wild
1) We make this easy using the
Spot bid advisor
2) With deliberate pool
selection and bidding, you
will keep your Spot instance
as long as you need to.
3) And with new features like
Spot fleet diversified we do
the heavy lifting for you...

$0.27 $0.29$0.50
1b 1c1a
8XL
$0.30 $0.16$0.214XL
$0.07 $0.08$0.082XL
$0.05 $0.04$0.04XL
$0.01 $0.04$0.01L
C3
$1.76
On
Demand
$0.88
$0.44
$.22
$0.11
Show me the markets!
Each instance family
Each instance size
Each Availability Zone
In every region
Is a separate Spot Market

50% Bid
75% Bid
You pay the
market
price
Bid Price Vs Market Price
25% Bid

Spot fleet helps you
Launch Thousands of Spot Instances
with one RequestSpotFleet call.
Get Best Price
Find the lowest priced horsepower that works for you.
or
Get Diversified Resources
Diversify your fleet. Grow your availability.
and
Apply Custom Weighting
Create your own capacity unit based on your application needs

It is easy!
aws ec2 request-spot-fleet --spot-fleet-request-config file://config.json
{ "IamFleetRole": "arn:aws:iam::781603563322:role/fleet-role", "TargetCapacity":
"100", "SpotPrice": "0.03", "ValidFrom": "2015-09-15T00:56:19Z", "ValidUntil":
"2016-09-14T07:00:00Z", "TerminateInstancesWithExpiration": true,
"LaunchSpecifications": [ { "ImageId": "ami-0d4cfd66", "InstanceType":
"c3.large", "WeightedCapacity": 2, "SubnetId": "subnet-d0dc51fb" }, { "ImageId":
"ami-0d4cfd66", "InstanceType": "c3.large", "WeightedCapacity": 2, "SubnetId":
"subnet-64531413" }, { "ImageId": "ami-0d4cfd66", "InstanceType": "c3.large",
"WeightedCapacity": 2, "SubnetId": "subnet-0b1b8052" }, { "ImageId": "ami-
0d4cfd66", "InstanceType": "c3.xlarge", "WeightedCapacity": 4, "SubnetId":
"subnet-d0dc51fb" }, { "ImageId": "ami-0d4cfd66", "InstanceType": "c3.xlarge",
"WeightedCapacity": 4, "SubnetId": "subnet-64531413" }, { "ImageId": "ami-
0d4cfd66", "InstanceType": "c3.xlarge", "WeightedCapacity": 4, "SubnetId":
"subnet-0b1b8052" }, { "ImageId": "ami-0d4cfd66", "InstanceType": "c3.4xlarge",
"WeightedCapacity": 16, "SubnetId": "subnet-d0dc51fb" }, { "ImageId": "ami-
0d4cfd66", "InstanceType": "c3.4xlarge", "WeightedCapacity": 16, "SubnetId":
"subnet-64531413" }, { "ImageId": "ami-0d4cfd66", "InstanceType": "c3.4xlarge",
"WeightedCapacity": 16, "SubnetId": "subnet-0b1b8052" }, { "ImageId": "ami-
"subnet-d0dc51fb" }, { "ImageId": "ami-0d4cfd66", "InstanceType": "c3.8xlarge",
"WeightedCapacity": 32, "SubnetId": "subnet-64531413" }, { "ImageId": "ami-
"subnet-0b1b8052" }, { "ImageId": "ami-0d4cfd66", "InstanceType": "c3.2xlarge",
"WeightedCapacity": 8, "SubnetId": "subnet-d0dc51fb" }, { "ImageId": "ami-
"subnet-64531413" }, { "ImageId": "ami-0d4cfd66", "InstanceType": "c3.2xlarge",
"WeightedCapacity": 8, "SubnetId": "subnet-0b1b8052" } ] }

An easy to use interface that lets
you launch spare EC2 instances in
seconds
Helps you select and bid on the EC2
instances that meet your applications
requirements
Simple to use dashboard lets you
modify and manage your
application’s compute capacity
EC2 Spot Console

Using a single
additional Parameter
Run continuously
for up to 6 hours
Save up to 50% off
On-Demand pricing
EC2 Spot Blocks
$1

What’s in 6 hours?
~ 21% less than 1 hour
~ 35% less than 2 hours
~ 40% less than 3 hours
In total roughly 50% of all
instances live less than 6
hours

Lets see EC2 Spot in action..
Best Practices
Hadoop
Stateless Applications (e.g. web tiers)
Batch processing

EC2 Best practices
Fault
tolerance
for Spot
Stateless Multi-AZ
Loosely
coupled
Instance
Flexibility

Core nodes
Master
Node
Master instance group
Hadoop cluster
Core instance group
HDFS HDFS
DataNode (HDFS)

Core nodes
Master
Node
Master instance group
Hadoop cluster
Core instance group
HDFS HDFS
Can Add Core
Nodes:
More CPU
More Memory
More HDFS Space
HDFS

Task nodes – Spot the opportunity
Master
Node
Hadoop cluster
HDFS HDFS
No HDFS
Provides compute
resources:
CPU
Memory
Core instance group Task instance group

Task Nodes – Multiple Instance Types
Master
Node
Hadoop cluster
HDFS HDFS
Can add and remove
task nodes
c3.8xl, r3.8xl, r3.4xl, etc
The
opportunity
Core instance group

Multiple capacity pools
How flexible are you?
2. Across Families
1. Within family

Review and launch
{
"AllocationStrategy": "diversified",
"TargetCapacity": 1000,
"SpotPrice": "0.005",
"TerminateInstancesWithExpiration": true,
"LaunchSpecifications": [
{
"ImageId": "ami-0d4cfd66",
"InstanceType": "c3.xlarge",
"WeightedCapacity": 4,
"SubnetId": "subnet-d0dc51fb"
},
{
"InstanceType": "c3.2xlarge",
},

Results - Hadoop
Requested 1000
vCores over 30 days
Minimum 848 vCores
Mode 1008 vCores
Average 1005 vCores
Average Price of
$0.0118 per vCore
Savings of over 81%

But what about HDFS?
Master
Node
Hadoop cluster
HDFS HDFS
Can add and remove
task nodes
CORE TASK
cc2.8xl, r3.8xl, d2.4xl, etc
Spot Blocks? Use EMR/S3?

• No need to scale HDFS
– Capacity
– Replication for durability
• Amazon S3 scales with your
data
– Both in IOPs and data storage
– Massively parallel
EMRFS - Amazon
S3 as HDFS
Spot blocks for HDFS
• If HDFS cluster lives for
less than 6 hours

Hadoop on EC2 Spot – takeaways
Your Work
Run task nodes separately with EC2 Spot fleet
Consider Spot blocks for core/HDFS nodes
What EC2 Spot fleet does for you
Saves you money
Heterogeneous instance management
Scale on the unit that matters to you
Accelerate results (time is money)

Stateless Web Application
Elastic Load
Balancing
Stateless
Web Servers
(Spot)
Stateless
Web Servers
(Spot)
Session
State Data
Spot fleet
Availability Zone A
Availability Zone B
Stateless
Web Servers
(Spot)
Stateless
Web Servers
(Spot)

Diversification with EC2 Spot fleet
Multiple EC2 Spot instances
selected
Multiple Availability Zones
selected
Pick the instances with similar
performance characteristics e.g.
c3.large, m3.large, m4.large,
r3.large, c4.large.

2. Across Families
3. Across Zones

Review and Launch {
{
"InstanceType": "c3.large",
"SpotPrice": "0.105"
},
{
"InstanceType": "c4.large",
"SpotPrice": "0.11"
},
{
"InstanceType": "m3.large",
"SpotPrice": "0.133"
},

Results - Web Application
50 instances requested,
over 30 days.
- Never dropped
below 45 instances
- 85% discount if you
wanted 50 and
could withstand
dropping to 45
- If you only wanted
45 the discount is
still 83%

Some additional considerations
Session state
Elastic Load Balancing
Two minute warning

Session state for the web application in DynamoDB.
• Data replicated across availability zones.
You can also choose other databases to maintain state in
your architecture.
• Amazon RDS using Multi-AZ deployments
• Amazon Elasticache
Where to store the state?

Since Spot fleet is configured to
span across multiple Availability
Zones, we highly recommend
enabling cross-zone load
balancing for the load balancer.
To allow in-flight requests to
complete when de-registering Spot
instances that are about to be
terminated, connection draining
can be enabled on the load
balancer with a timeout of 90
seconds.
Elastic Load Balancing

Capitalizing on two minute warning
When the Spot price exceeds
your bid price, the instance will
receive a two-minute warning
Check for the 2 minute spot
instance termination
notification every 5 seconds
leveraging a script invoked at
instance launch

Sample script – two minutes left!
1) Check for 2 minute
warning
2) If YES, detach instance
from ELB
3) OTHERWISE, do nothing
4) Sleep for 5 seconds
$ if curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-
data/spot/termination-time |
grep -q .*T.*Z; then instance_id=$(curl -s
http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id);
aws elb deregister-instances-from-load-balancer
--load-balancer-name my-load-balancer
--instances $instance_id;
/env/bin/flushsessiontoDBonterminationscript.sh; fi

For those of you - Using Auto Scaling
Two Auto Scaling groups
•On-demand + Reserved for base
use
•Add an additional Auto Scaling
group with Spot
Both Auto Scaling groups behind
the same Elastic Load Balancer.
Use the bid advisor to select the
right instance time for your
application.

Web Application Architecture with Spot
Elastic Load
Balancing
Stateless
Web Servers
Stateless
Web Servers
On Demand Auto
Scaling group
Session
State Data
Stateless Web
Servers (Spot)
Stateless Web
Servers (Spot)
Spot Auto
Scaling group
Availability Zone A
Availability Zone B
On-Demand
ASG
Spot ASG

Batch Processing with
Amazon EC2 Spot

Batch oriented applications can leverage on-demand
processing using EC2 Spot to save up to 90% cost:
Batch Processing with Amazon EC2 Spot
Monte Carlo
simulation
Molecular
modeling
Media
processing
High energy
simulations

AWS cloud
Region
Amazon S3
DynamoDB
Amazon SQS
CloudWatch172.16.0.0/16
Internet
gateway
region-1a - 172.16.0.0/20 region-1b - 172.16.16.0/20
region-1c - 172.16.32.0/20 region-1d - 172.16.48.0/20
Cluster
Controller
c3.4x Spot r3.4x Spot c3.4x Spot r3.4x Spot
c3.4x Spot r3.4x Spot
Grid processing with Amazon EC2 Spot

Common method Batch Processing

EC2 Spot fleet to setup a
heterogeneous, scalable “grid”
of EC2 spot instances with
multiple capacity pools as
worker nodes
Scaling to 50,000 cores
EC2 Spot blocks for less
flexible jobs that must run
continuously.

2. Across Families
3. Across Zones
1. Within family

Review and Launch
{
{
},
{
"SubnetId": "subnet-64531413"
},
{

Results - Grid
Requested 1000
vCores over 30 days
Minimum 960 vCores
Mode 1024 vCores
Average 1012 vCores
Average Price of $0.012
per vCore
Savings of over 80%

Sample script – two minutes left!
1) Check for 2 minute warning
2) If YES, run shutdown scripts
3) OTHERWISE, do nothing
4) Then sleep for 5 seconds
#!/bin/bash
while true
do
if curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-
data/spot/termination-time | grep -q .*T.*Z; then
/env/bin/runterminationscripts.sh;
else
# Spot instance not yet marked for termination.
sleep 5
fi
done

Run continuously
for up to 6 hours
Save up to 50% off
On-Demand pricing
Don’t forget Blocks!
Using a single
additional Parameter
$1

Whodunit?
Core Count
./aws_spot_fleet_request -p reinvent --cpu 8 --ram 64 -m 4.7 -c 1500

Rendering in the Cloud vs. On-Premise
-
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
1 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
RenderTime(s)
Frame #
EC2/EFS
On Prem
Lower is better

Lessons Learned
• Use as many different instance types as you can. Especially older generations.
• Think about ways to modify your workload
• Use every availability-zone
• Check your limits, especially your EBS limit and VPC setup (address space)
• Resource-Oriented Bidding
• Diversified Allocation
• Benchmark your workload and set pricing accordingly
• Set ONLY realistic pricing that you will pay for
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help or pre-planning your run from AWS

Summary
AWS is Spare
Capacity at Scale
We Do the
Heavy Lifting
You Pocket
the Savings!
$1

Getting started
Try the Bid Advisor Fire up the Spot Console Block some time

Reference Links
EC2 Spot Documentation:
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot/
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot/bid-advisor/
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot/getting-started/
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot/faqs/
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot/testimonials/
User Guide
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-spot-instances.html
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/spot-fleet.html
Helpful AWS Blog Posts
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/focusing-on-spot-instances-lets-talk-about-best-practices/
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/building-price-aware-applications-using-ec2-spot-instances/
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/cost-effective-batch-processing-with-amazon-ec2-spot/
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/dynamic-scaling-with-ec2-spot-fleet/

AWS October Webinar Series - Using Spot Instances to Save up to 90% off Your EC2 Bill

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AWS October Webinar Series - Using Spot Instances to Save up to 90% off Your EC2 Bill