[chef] Re: Launching spot instances?

[Jeffrey Hulten < >]

I could see a "knife ec2 stack create" that used a default cloud formation 
stack json and passed in the parameters. This could be customized then to run 
spot instances.

The issue with knife and spot instances is that they can take up to 15 
minutes to start up. Basically (as I understand it) there is a batch job that 
takes the pool of bids and the available capacity and determines what to 
start and what to kill on a scheduled basis. That means that your request for 
spot instances cannot be instantaneous. This is not a model that the knife 
ec2 plugin can support.

--
Jeffrey Hulten
Principal Consultant at Automated Labs, LLC

 
  206-853-5216
Skype: jeffhulten

On Oct 25, 2012, at 6:56 AM, Mike wrote:

> While the underlying library fog may provide this functionality, this
> actually seems less useful to be part of the knife-ec2 command set.
> 
> `knife ec2 server create` attempts to create an instance, wait for it
> to come up, bootstrap it via ssh, and start up chef-client (usually).
> 
> From what I garner, placing a spot request with a bid provide is not
> ensured to be delivered at the time pf placing the request, and
> therefore the flow of what "ec2 server create" does today would not be
> the same, rather it seems like it would be: "If I can get a spot
> request now, please give it to me, otherwise...?" Fail? The bid
> request was probably placed, so this isn't a failure per se.
> 
> The other part of why I think this might not be a great idea is:  Spot
> instances come up and down whenever their bid price is met or outbid
> respectively. This can cause easy buildup of cruft in your node/client
> list if you are allowing these to auto-register/validate themselves,
> and then have to clean up after them once they are gone.
> 
> All in all, I think spot instances have a use case, but I don't know
> if during ec2 server create (and subsequently bootstrap phase) makes
> sense to support this.
> 
> 
> On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 1:44 PM, Christopher J. Bottaro
> <
 >
>  wrote:
>> How can I launch spot instances using "knife ec2 server create"?  I don't
>> see any relevant command line switches.
>> 
>> Thanks for the help.

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