Cut your Amazon EC2 costs in half
Sep 18, 2018
If you are using EC2 with Auto Scale groups, you can dramatically lower your EC2 compute costs by using PowerDown to manage your Spot instances in just five clicks.
Standard EC2 Spot instances are typically up to 80% cheaper than regular On-Demand servers, but they come with limitations such as termination with little warning and restrictions on how they are used in Auto Scale Groups. So while Spot instances have great promise, they are not as widely used for general computing as they could otherwise be.
PowerDown Spot Management
PowerDown overcomes the normal restrictions on Spot instances and enables you to use Spot instances for production, development and test workloads in your Auto Scale groups. PowerDown allows you to mix Spot and On-Demand instances in a single Auto Scale group without compromising availability and without having to change any of your existing AWS configuration.
How It Works
The PowerDown Spot Optimizer extends the AWS Spot facility by directly managing the lifecycle of Spot instances. You define your desired number of Spot and On-Demand instances for your Auto Scale group and PowerDown then monitors the group and ensures you have the right number of spot and demand instances. PowerDown will create Spot instances in your Auto Scale group and migrate workloads from your On-Demand instances without downtime or impacting availability or performance.
If AWS warns that it will soon reclaim your Spot servers, PowerDown proactively launches replacement On-Demand servers before the Spot servers are terminated. PowerDown thus protects your availability and capacity.
Configuring Spots with Auto Scale Groups
To configure an Auto Scale group to use Spot instances, select the Auto Scale group from the resource list and enter your desired Spot and On-Demand instance configuration.
You can specify either the desired Spot capacity or the desired On-Demand capacity. If you specify the Spot capacity, On-Demand servers will be used for the remainder up to the Auto Scale Group desired number of instances and vice-versa. You can specify the desired number or percentage of servers. Using a percentage is preferred as it will scale automatically if the total desired number of instances is changed.
Once you click Apply, PowerDown will migrate your workload onto the new cost-effective Spot instances and you will immediately begin to see savings.
Spot Reclamation Warnings
When AWS needs more servers for On-Demand customers, it may reclaim Spot servers to meet the need. Spot servers will be given a 2 minute warning so they can save state before they are terminated. PowerDown listens for this warning and proactively creates and attaches a replacement On-Demand server so that it will be ready and serving requests before the original Spot server is terminated. PowerDown does this to ensure availability during the transition.
Lower Cloud Costs
The PowerDown Spot Optimizer enables you to effectively and easily use Spot instances for your production workloads and reduce your EC2 compute costs by up to 80%. Coupled with the ability to schedule powering-down non-production loads when not required, you can achieve big reductions in your cloud spend.
Learn More
To learn more about the PowerDown spot management, read Lower Costs With Spot Instances which goes into more detail about how PowerDown manages Spot instances.
Free Evaluation
PowerDown offers a free, 30-day evaluation without requiring a credit card. Try for yourself and see the savings you can achieve in just one month.
Originally published at www.sensedeep.com on September 18, 2018.
