Ask HN: Who uses AWS spot instances?

7 points by Patrick_Devine 12y ago ↗ HN

Which companies are using spot instances, and what are they using them for? Off the top of my head I can think of Netflix, but most companies haven't created their architecture to be that resilient.

4 comments

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aioprisan 12y ago ↗

We use it extensively at my old shop, Optaros, where I worked on quite a bit of that strategy. The VP of Operations spoke at AWS re:invent this year on how we use spot instances to massively cut down on costs: https://portal.reinvent.awsevents.com/connect/speakerDetail....

toomuchtodo 12y ago ↗

Scribd is using it for async document conversion.

lgieron 12y ago ↗

We use it for ML-related tasks: transforming data, training models - stuff that are CPU-intensive and can occasionally fail.

Patrick_Devine 12y ago ↗

I'm wondering whether I should have asked the question "Why are people not using AWS spot instances?". It seems like the price savings alone should be enough for people to consider using them. Is the architecture too different where it makes deployment prohibitively difficult?