Spot Virtual Machines in public cloud

Cost-effective VMs

Spot Virtual Machines are instances significantly cheaper than normal VMs and have all basic functionalities as normal VMs. Spot instances utilize spare cloud resources and as such, may be terminated at any time by CloudFerro.  Upon deletion, all resources spawned under the VM, including storage, are deleted permanently. Spot Vms should be used as a way to decrease costs in stateless workloads that don't require uptime and can be interrupted and completed later. This is especially useful in batch processing of earth observation data that has no significant time constraints.

Operating systems and images

Users may utilize Spot instances together with other cloud resources using the CloudFerro Dashboard, the REST API, a command-line client, or the OpenStack Orchestration scripts (Heat). Spot Instances can be connected to the network using virtual interfaces.

List of operating systems and ready-to-use images available in Clouds. Some images may not be available in all locations. For better information, refer to the Horizon dashboard.

  • CentOS 7
  • Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS
  • RHEL 6, 7 mini / full
  • SLES 12 mini / full
  • OSGeo 11.0
  • App Catalog Image

All Spot instances come fully configured (based on the selected image) and ready for use, with an administrative user account, network access, preconfigured toolboxes, and software components. If selected during creation, EODATA can be auto-mounted using S3FS. S3 credentials may also be obtained at a later time from our client portal or through the API. Volume Storage may be attached to running instances to extend the storage space available. Basic instance storage is terminated upon instance deletation. Just like normal VMs, Spot VMs can be started, stopped, rebooted, paused, and snapshotted. They may also be attached to Virtual Networks. Virtual Networks may be system-defined or user-defined. Find out more about Virtual Networks.

System-defined networks include:

  • Internet network used to access the global internet.
  • The EO Storage network available in Projects/Environments that are allowed access to the EODATA*.

PROVISIONING

Users may utilize SPOT instances and other cloud resources using the CloudFerro Dashboard, the REST API, a command-line client, or the OpenStack Orchestration scripts (Heat). SPOT instances can be connected to the network using virtual interfaces. Starting a SPOT instance is done in the same way as a normal VM by choosing one of the spot flavors during provisioning.

TERMINATION

SPOT instances can be terminated at any time by the users or by CloudFerro. CloudFerro will terminate them if there aren't enough free compute resources in the cloud. 2 minutes before termination CloudFerro can post massage to adress defined by the user in VM metadata. For more information regarding SPOT operation please refer to our documentation. 

BILLING

SPOT instances are priced per hour of usage (Per Usage Mode) and billed per second of usage. Usage is measured from initiating the VM by the provisioner to the moment of termination. Users may also temporarily shelve their VMs, paying only for the persistent storage space they occupy. Billing is typicali done within 2h from usage. Detailed pricing and availability of configurations are documented in the price list.