Probabilistic Guarantees of Execution Duration for Amazon
Spot Instances
Authors
Event Type
Paper
TimeTuesday, November 14th4:30pm -
5pm
Location405-406-407
DescriptionIn this paper we propose DrAFTS -- a methodology for
implementing probabilistic guarantees of instance
reliability in the Amazon Spot tier. Amazon offers
"unreliable" virtual machine instances (ones that may be
terminated at any time) at a potentially large discount
relative to "reliable" On-demand and Reserved instances.
Our method predicts the "bid values" that users can
specify to provision Spot instances which ensure at
least a fixed duration of execution with a given
probability. We illustrate the method and test its
validity using Spot pricing data post facto, both
randomly and using real-world workload traces. We also
test the efficacy of the method experimentally by using
it to launch Spot instances and then observing the
instance termination rate. Our results indicate that it
is possible to obtain the same level of reliability from
unreliable instances that the Amazon service level
agreement guarantees for reliable instances with a
greatly reduced cost.
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