Series on AWS spot instances
Preface

While pondering about whether and why AWS would retire instance types (see here) I started looking more deeply into the spot instance market to see if and what it could potentially tell about instance type retirement.

I started writing one post about the topic. Then I realized it had to be split into two. And into three. So now I have a series of blog posts about AWS spot instances and the spot instance market.

I’ve split these posts into the following topics:

1. Overview of spot instances and the spot instance market
2. How to actually use spot instances
3. Why spot market exists, where do spot instances come from and what drives spot instance prices
4. Interlude into discussion of spot price minimums
5. What can the spot market tell about AWS’s capacity changes (in progress)

Most of the information I’m going to present is collected from several sources which themselves have done excellent research and provide excellent advise for spot instance users. I’ll try to give credit to those sources as far as possible without sacrificing readability of this piece.

Now, onwards to the first chapter.