Can someone explain Google Preamble Instances vs Amazon Spot Instances?
The author says Sutherland was dissuaded by having to specify a spot price upfront on AWS but I don't see how that is any different than what Google is doing.
The author says Sutherland was dissuaded by having to specify a spot price upfront on AWS but I don't see how that is any different than what Google is doing.
Google Spot Instances (preemptibles) are 80% off and that's it. It's simple.
I think AWS might be cheaper in this regard but less predictable, so it is a tradeoff.
Edit: I haven't looked yet into "Spot Fleets".
Then it is definitely interesting :)
In AWS you simply tell how much you're willing to pay to keep the instance uninterrupted. If there's someone who is willing to pay more, they will get the instance from you and yours will be shut down.
By comparison, if you are able to create a preemptible VM you are guaranteed to pay .2x retail and then likely (but not guaranteed) to have 24h to do your work.
tl;dr: A maximum bid of .2x retail isn't equivalent to preemptible. There's almost certainly a bid for a given instance for a given runtime that would result in the same price, but it varies over time, space, runtime and instances shape.
Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud (and launched preemptible VMs)
In my several years experience using GCE it is indeed extremely likely. Two years ago it wasn't very likely, but it became very likely about a year ago. Incidentally, I'm the guy that convinced Drew Sutherland of this article to use GCE in the first place :-).
That said, there is still a "market" here: your work vs Google's work. It just shows up as a private floating probability instead of a public floating price.
Most of the time you get the full 24 maximum window.
edit: wording
Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud (and launched Preemptible VMs).
Economically, because the price is fixed and everyone has the same status, wouldn't that have the effect of oversubscription if that price is always below amazon spot price? Are you eg legally prevented from using a spot-like bid? I'd imagine spot would balance supply and demand better.
If they can sustain a lower price, picking a fixed discount gives them a marketing edge, even if AWS would come out lower overall. Most humans will pay a premium for certainty -- the certainty effect or "taxicab effect".
The distinction, as you've surmised, is that predictability is awfully useful. This 220k run (and Drew's quick 400k run last Sunday) had a predictable price. I doubt that such a run on Spot would have left the market price untouched ;).
That said, we absolutely have excess capacity that maybe having an auction clearing mechanism would fill. But I don't think it's worth the customer pain. Moreover, even Drew has come to us from Spot, suggesting that simplicity at a usually-fair/good price can take market share away (and reminder this is a fast growing market!).
The basis of budgeting and capacity planning is that everybody who participates in a free market secretly wishes they didn't have to.
if I were to launch an instance of Kubernetes (via container engine) with such VMs, would it have an issue? (as in, if I had more load, more preemptible vms would be provisioned automatically based on a previously set max amount and if a vm was removed, another would be assigned based on my minimum amount)
am I wrong in thinking that this is a much better option than running dedicated vms?
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-key-differences-between-A...