A cost-effective cloud strategy for small and medium enterprises (SMEs): Transforming business with amazon's EC2 spot instances

Abstract

In cloud service provisioning, spot instances are an attractive option for IT managers of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that usually have sporadic requirements for cloud resources. Though priced dynamically, spot instances are usually cheaper. Cloud service providers (CSPs) employ the spot instance approach to sell their "idle" resources because spot instances are spare slots requiring no pre-booking, unlike reserved or on-demand instances that require prior booking. However, IT managers have to win spot instances via auctions conducted by CSPs. An SME continues to consume spot instances as long as its bid exceeds the current spot price. But, if it loses at any point in time, the unfinished task is to be put on hold by checkpoint mechanism. Optimizing both bid price and checkpoint overhead calls for strategic thinking on the part of the SME. This chapter dwells on this issue to help the IT managers of SMEs transform their business with cloud. © 2018, IGI Global.