LearnKube
learnkube.com › blog › kubernetes-spot-instances
Kubernetes on Spot Instances - Cut Costs
November 6, 2018 - For example, if a master node notices that only 2 instances of an application are running, but you requested three, it immediately starts another one. Most of Kubernetes components are designed this way: a control loop that constantly regulates the current state around the desired state. Imagine you have 3 nodes and 3 replicas of an application, one running on each node. When a node running on a spot instance is reclaimed by the cloud provider, the application on that node is lost.
Amazon Web Services
aws.amazon.com › tutorials › amazon-eks-with-spot-instances
Run Kubernetes clusters for less
May 13, 2021 - In this tutorial you will learn how to add Spot Instances to your EKS clusters using Spot Managed node groups. You will also run a sample Kubernetes deployment and autoscale it on your Spot Instance nodes by using Kubernetes Cluster Autoscaler.
How does the autoscaler work with spot instances and cluster.yaml?
Once it is working, instead of creating a spot fleet and scaling the target size, it instead creates an ASG of spot instances. (This was probably because you didn't used to be able to scale spot fleet targets without recreating the fleet. More on github.com
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We use Kubernetes and spot instances to reduce EC2 billing up to 80%
It is very common for AWS to completely run out of entire classes of instance types e.g. all of R5 or all of M5. And when that happens your cluster will die · What you want to do is split your cluster into minimum two node groups e.g. Core and Task: More on news.ycombinator.com
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January 31, 2020amazon web services - How to create AWS spot instances with Kops or Kubernetes? - Stack Overflow
Does anybody know how to create instances of type 'spot' with kops or with kubernetes? More on stackoverflow.com
AWS Spot instance EKS with stateful pods
Use a stateful set backed by an EBS volume More on reddit.com
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August 31, 2021Videos
Spot.io
spot.io › home › kubernetes architecture › how to run a kubernetes cluster on spot instances
How to Run a Kubernetes Cluster on Spot Instances | Spot.io
September 12, 2024 - In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to optimally run your Kubernetes cluster on AWS spot instances. Spot instances allow cloud customers to purchase compute capacity at a significantly lower cost than on-demand or reserved instances.
Medium
medium.com › riskified-technology › run-kubernetes-on-aws-ec2-spot-instances-with-zero-downtime-f7327a95dea
Run Kubernetes Production Environment on Spot Instances With Zero Downtime: A Complete Guide | Riskified Tech
January 5, 2021 - By setting different weights, k8s scheduler will first try to spread those 3 redis replicas over different AZs (‘failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/zone’ node label). If there is no room available in separate zones, it will continue to try to schedule them on different Instance types (instance-type node label). Lastly, if no place is available in either separate AZs or Instance types, it will try to spread the replicas across separate nodes (hostname node label). Specifying such rules for critical deployments will help us distribute pods according to the Spot Instances Pool logic and minimize the chance of multiple terminations of the same component at the same time.
K8s
cluster-api-aws.sigs.k8s.io › topics › spot-instances.html
Spot instances - Kubernetes Cluster API Provider AWS
AWS Spot Instances allows user to reduce the costs of their compute resources by utilising AWS spare capacity for a lower price.
Google Cloud
cloud.google.com › application hosting › google kubernetes engine (gke) › spot vms
Spot VMs | Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) | Google Cloud Documentation
To learn how to use Spot VMs, refer to Use Spot VMs. Spot VMs are Compute Engine virtual machine (VM) instances that are priced lower than standard Compute Engine VMs and provide no guarantee of availability.
Cast AI
cast.ai › cast ai › blog › spot instances: how to reduce aws, azure, and gcp costs by up to 90%
Spot Instances: How to Reduce Cloud Costs by 90%
October 22, 2025 - A Spot Instance is a sort of cloud computing instance that allows users to bid on unused Amazon EC2 (or other cloud provider) capacity at a reduced price, possibly saving up to 90% off On-Demand pricing.
AWS re:Post
repost.aws › knowledge-center › eks-spot-instance-best-practices
Best practices for using EC2 Spot Instances with Amazon EKS | AWS re:Post
December 16, 2022 - Every Spot Instance pool consists of an unused EC2 instance capacity for a specific instance type in a specific Availability Zone. When a node group tries to provision a new node, the node group uses one of the instance types that's defined ...
GitHub
github.com › kubernetes › kubernetes › issues › 57382
Kubelet often fails on AWS spot instances · Issue #57382 · kubernetes/kubernetes
December 19, 2017 - /kind bug In a kops created cluster running Kubernetes 1.8.4 nodes sometimes start but fail to connect to the masters. I have tracked the issue down to this difference: Failed: I1216 07:28:57.369519 1900 aws.go:847] Building AWS cloudpro...
GitHub
github.com › kubernetes-incubator › kube-aws › issues › 1093
How does the autoscaler work with spot instances and cluster.yaml?
April 16, 2016 - Once it is working, instead of creating a spot fleet and scaling the target size, it instead creates an ASG of spot instances. (This was probably because you didn't used to be able to scale spot fleet targets without recreating the fleet.
Published Dec 28, 2017
Namshi Engineering
tech.namshi.io › blog › 2017 › 07 › 09 › running-spot-instances-in-production
Running Spot Instances in Production — Namshi Engineering
July 9, 2017 - We’ve heard of people running workloads on spot instances but most of the workloads are usually long-running jobs where you don’t mind if the instance gets terminated at any time. Running customer-facing apps is a completely different challenge where we can’t afford any downtime of any sort. We are fully running kubernetes in production which makes it exciting for the challenge of how we can actually test chaos engineering in production with our microservices.
YouTube
youtube.com › watch
Cost-effective Compute Clusters with Spot and Pre-emptible Instances - Bich Le & Arun Sriraman - YouTube
Cost-effective Compute Clusters with Spot and Pre-emptible Instances [I] - Bich Le & Arun Sriraman, Platform9Kubernetes and Spot/Pre-emptible Instances (SPIs...
Published December 15, 2017 Views 513
Medium
blog.argoproj.io › use-spot-instances-with-your-kubernetes-clusters-on-aws-2a27f1887bb0
Use Spot Instances with your Kubernetes Clusters on AWS | by Shrinand Javadekar | Argo Project
December 7, 2019 - Use Spot Instances with your Kubernetes Clusters on AWS Written by Shrinand Javadekar, Ed Lee Spot instances provide an attractive option to use cost-effective compute. They can be up to 10x cheaper …
Carlos Becker
carlosbecker.com › posts › k8s-sandbox-costs
70% cheaper Kubernetes cluster on AWS | Carlos Becker
April 28, 2017 - You can overcome that by having a mix of spot and on demand nodes instance groups, or by setting a very high bid and putting some alert in place. Beware. With all those changes in place, we are now spending around $7/day on our cluster on business days. Brotip™: Add KubernetesCluster as a cost ...
Banzaicloud
banzaicloud.com › blog › hollowtrees
Managing spot instance clusters on Kubernetes with Hollowtrees · Banzai Cloud
January 29, 2018 - It handles spot price surges within a given region or availability zone and reschedules applications before instances are taken down. Hollowtrees follows a “batteries included but removable” principle, and has plugins for different runtimes and frameworks. At its most basic level it manages spot-based clusters for virtual machines, but it contains plugins for Kubernetes, Prometheus and Pipeline, as well.
Kubecost Blog
blog.kubecost.com › blog › spot-readiness
Spot Readiness - Kubernetes Guides
June 13, 2025 - Comprehensive Kubernetes cost monitoring & optimization ... Spot instances are spare compute instances that public cloud providers offer to customers at a deeply discounted rate—potentially up to 90% cheaper.
Hacker News
news.ycombinator.com › item
We use Kubernetes and spot instances to reduce EC2 billing up to 80% | Hacker News
January 31, 2020 - It is very common for AWS to completely run out of entire classes of instance types e.g. all of R5 or all of M5. And when that happens your cluster will die · What you want to do is split your cluster into minimum two node groups e.g. Core and Task:
Top answer 1 of 2
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From the docs https://github.com/kubernetes/kops/blob/master/docs/instance_groups.md#converting-an-instance-group-to-use-spot-instances
Follow the normal procedure for reconfiguring an InstanceGroup, but set the maxPrice property to your bid. For example, "0.10" represents a spot-price bid of $0.10 (10 cents) per hour.
So after kops create cluster but before kops update cluster --yes run kops edit ig nodes --name $NAME and set maxPrice to your max bid.
metadata:
creationTimestamp: "2016-07-10T15:47:14Z"
name: nodes
spec:
machineType: t2.medium
maxPrice: "0.01"
maxSize: 3
minSize: 3
role: Node
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It appears that gardener/machine-controller-manager could be taught about Spot instances fairly easily, and there is an existing issue to do just such a thing. I can't recall off-hand if that is the Node Controller Manager that I recalled seeing, or it is merely a Node Controller Manager and thus there may be other implementations of that idea which already include spot support.
That makes a presumption that you actually meant spot for the workers, and not for the whole cluster. If you mean the whole cluster, then you may be much, much happier with something like kubespray and use that to lay a functioning cluster on top of existing machines. Just bear in mind that while kubernetes certainly is resilient to "damage," including the loss of a master, an etcd member, and without question the loss of a Node, it might frown if a huge portion of its machines vanish at once. In other words: using spot could mean that you spend more programmer/devops/glucose triaging spot disappearance, or you have to so vastly overprovision replicas that it starts to eat into the savings from spot in the first place.