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Introducing Preemptible VMs

googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com

41–50 of 98 posts

Re: Introducing Preemptible VMs

#41
post #15

Any reason you couldn't use these for conventional web stuff? 30 seconds could easily be long enough to bring up another instance and sync data if needed.

You'd have to make sure that if a node gets terminated while processing a request, that request can be re-routed to a live VM. Unless you don't care about users randomly seeing errors of course.

Re: Introducing Preemptible VMs

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't fundamentally different from EC2 spot instances.

Beyond the fixed price, no? Also, do you get the 30s grace period on spot instance shutdown?

Right, but the idea of getting kicked out once someone's willing to pay more is not a new one.

Re: Introducing Preemptible VMs

#43
post #21

Any developer who was burned by App Engine pricing in the past is likely to take the lure of a "70% off" discount with a grain of salt because of the much higher cost of incorrectly relying on Google's pricing pledges. In case anyone forgets, the pricing changes on Google App Engine caused many developers to abandon apps they had developed on the platform because of hundreds of percent increases in pricing: https://g…

That goes back to 2011. Has anything been changed on people more recently?

Re: Introducing Preemptible VMs

#44
post #30

So... this is essentially first come, first served based on their description. And they say the preemptibles come from a smaller pool of resources. Seems odd to me they wouldn't have a number somewhere of how many are available and how many are in use given that it's a finite resource. Tough to build a business model around a resource you can't even determine the availability of.

> Though to build a business model around a resource you can't even determine the availability of.

That's exactly why it's cheap: you're trading price for reliability.

Re: Introducing Preemptible VMs

#45
post #30

So... this is essentially first come, first served based on their description. And they say the preemptibles come from a smaller pool of resources. Seems odd to me they wouldn't have a number somewhere of how many are available and how many are in use given that it's a finite resource. Tough to build a business model around a resource you can't even determine the availability of.

You're right that it's first come first served, but the 24 hour time limit combined with natural churn means you aren't likely to be "locked out" for long periods of time.

Re: Introducing Preemptible VMs

#46
post #15

Any reason you couldn't use these for conventional web stuff? 30 seconds could easily be long enough to bring up another instance and sync data if needed.

You'd have to make sure that if a node gets terminated while processing a request, that request can be re-routed to a live VM. Unless you don't care about users randomly seeing errors of course.

They give you 30 seconds to shut down. Should be plenty of time to gracefully end your current requests and shut down the web server.

Re: Introducing Preemptible VMs

#47
post #21

Any developer who was burned by App Engine pricing in the past is likely to take the lure of a "70% off" discount with a grain of salt because of the much higher cost of incorrectly relying on Google's pricing pledges. In case anyone forgets, the pricing changes on Google App Engine caused many developers to abandon apps they had developed on the platform because of hundreds of percent increases in pricing: https://g…

App Engine was in preview when its price changed.

It was in "preview" for 3 years.

During those 3 years no warning was given that the pricing changes were going to be of such a magnitude.

As a result people had sufficient time and not enough warning to build entire businesses on an infrastructure that they later had to abandon.

That's unforgivable.

Re: Introducing Preemptible VMs

#48
post #21

Any developer who was burned by App Engine pricing in the past is likely to take the lure of a "70% off" discount with a grain of salt because of the much higher cost of incorrectly relying on Google's pricing pledges. In case anyone forgets, the pricing changes on Google App Engine caused many developers to abandon apps they had developed on the platform because of hundreds of percent increases in pricing: https://g…

That goes back to 2011. Has anything been changed on people more recently?

[deleted]

Re: Introducing Preemptible VMs

#49
post #15

Any reason you couldn't use these for conventional web stuff? 30 seconds could easily be long enough to bring up another instance and sync data if needed.

That could be an interesting model if your web app is a single-page / static app served from Google Cloud Storage, with Javascript making AJAX calls to your backend and configured to gracefully handle transient errors as servers come and go.

Re: Introducing Preemptible VMs

#50
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, spot varies. Sometimes it's low, but the price varies based on demand. Using prices as of right now for example, Currently in California, c3.8xl instances are quite popular, running $1.68 an hour on an instance that's normally 1.912 an hour, roughly a 13% discount. 70% strikes me as better than 13%, especially when it's predictable. (and 70% below an already substantially lower hourly price...) [1] http://stora…

The long-run price for a c3.8xlarge in California is somewhere between $0.40 and $0.50, though you're correct that right now they're $1.68. California tends to be more expensive than other AWS regions, though (I can't remember the reason - perhaps just availability?). If you're in us-east-1 the price sticks around $0.20 per hour, and eu-west-1 is rock-solid at $0.32 per hour. If you have work that can be done on spot…

The idea with Google is that you don't need to worry about which instances you run, at which price, and in which region.

For example, with Google you don't need to get a specialized instance type to use it's monster-fast Local SSD - just use the same instance types. This alone should simplify use of Preemptible VMs.

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