Cloud Engineer interview question · Most asked
What are spot instances and how do you use them safely?
Summary
Spare capacity at a large discount that the provider can reclaim with short notice (two minutes on AWS, about 30 seconds on Azure and Google Cloud). Use them for interruptible, retryable work (batch, CI, stateless workers), diversify instance types and zones, handle interruption notices with checkpointing, and mix with on-demand for a guaranteed baseline.
Longer Answer
Kubernetes node groups and Karpenter can blend spot and on-demand capacity with interruption handling.
Key Points
- Big discount, can be reclaimed.
- Interruptible workloads only.
- Diversify and checkpoint.
- Mix with on-demand baseline.
Explanation
What interviewers look for
Understanding interruption handling.
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