Use allocation strategies to determine how EC2 Fleet or Spot Fleet fulfills Spot and On-Demand capacity - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
Allocation strategies for Spot InstancesAllocation strategies for On-Demand InstancesChoose the appropriate Spot allocation strategyMaintain target capacity for Spot InstancesPrioritize instance types for On-Demand capacity
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Use allocation strategies to determine how EC2 Fleet or Spot Fleet fulfills Spot and On-Demand capacity

When you use multiple capacity pools (each comprising an instance type and Availability Zone) in an EC2 Fleet or Spot Fleet, you can use an allocation strategy to manage how Amazon EC2 fulfills your Spot and On-Demand capacities from these pools. The allocation strategies can optimize for available capacity, price, and the instance types to use. There are different allocation strategies for Spot Instances and On-Demand Instances.

Allocation strategies for Spot Instances

Your launch configuration determines all the possible Spot capacity pools (instance types and Availability Zones) from which EC2 Fleet or Spot Fleet can launch Spot Instances. However, when launching instances, the fleet uses the allocation strategy that you specify to pick the specific pools from all your possible pools.

Note

(Linux instances only) If you configure your Spot Instance to launch with AMD SEV-SNP turned on, you are charged an additional hourly usage fee that is equivalent to 10% of the On-Demand hourly rate for the selected instance type. If the allocation strategy uses price as an input, the fleet does not include this additional fee; only the Spot price is used.

You can specify one of the following allocation strategies for Spot Instances:

Price capacity optimized (recommended)

The fleet identifies the pools with the highest capacity availability for the number of instances that are launching. This means that we will request Spot Instances from the pools that we believe have the lowest chance of interruption in the near term. The fleet then requests Spot Instances from the lowest priced of these pools.

The price capacity optimized allocation strategy is the best choice for most Spot workloads, such as stateless containerized applications, microservices, web applications, data and analytics jobs, and batch processing.

If you're using the Amazon CLI, the parameter name is price-capacity-optimized for EC2 Fleet and priceCapacityOptimized for Spot Fleet.

Capacity optimized

The fleet identifies the pools with the highest capacity availability for the number of instances that are launching. This means that we will request Spot Instances from the pools that we believe have the lowest chance of interruption in the near term. You can optionally set a priority for each instance type in your fleet, where the fleet optimizes for capacity first, but honors instance type priorities on a best-effort basis.

With Spot Instances, pricing changes slowly over time based on long-term trends in supply and demand, but capacity fluctuates in real time. The capacity optimized strategy automatically launches Spot Instances into the most available pools by looking at real-time capacity data and predicting which are the most available. This works well for workloads that may have a higher cost of interruption associated with restarting work, such as long Continuous Integration (CI), image and media rendering, Deep Learning, and High Performance Compute (HPC) workloads that may have a higher cost of interruption associated with restarting work. By offering the possibility of fewer interruptions, the capacity optimized strategy can lower the overall cost of your workload.

Alternatively, you can use the capacity optimized prioritized allocation strategy with a priority parameter to order instance types from highest to lowest priority. You can set the same priority for different instance types. The fleet will optimize for capacity first, but will honor instance type priorities on a best-effort basis (for example, if honoring the priorities will not significantly affect the fleet's ability to provision optimal capacity). This is a good option for workloads where the possibility of disruption must be minimized and the preference for certain instance types matters. Note that when you set the priority for instance types for your Spot capacity, the same priority is also applied to your On-Demand Instances if the On-Demand allocation strategy is set to prioritized. For Spot Fleet, using priorities is supported only if your fleet uses a launch template.

If you're using the Amazon CLI, the parameter names are capacity-optimized and capacity-optimized-prioritized for EC2 Fleet and capacityOptimized and capacityOptimizedPrioritized for Spot Fleet.

Diversified

The Spot Instances are distributed across all Spot capacity pools. If you're using the Amazon CLI, the parameter name is diversified for both EC2 Fleet and Spot Fleet.

Lowest price (not recommended)
Warning

We don't recommend the lowest price allocation strategy because it has the highest risk of interruption for your Spot Instances.

The Spot Instances come from the lowest priced pool that has available capacity. When using the Amazon CLI, this is the default strategy. However, we recommend that you override the default by specifying the price capacity optimized allocation strategy.

With the lowest price strategy, if the lowest priced pool doesn't have available capacity, the Spot Instances come from the next lowest priced pool that has available capacity. If a pool runs out of capacity before fulfilling your desired capacity, the fleet will continue to fulfill your request by drawing from the next lowest priced pool. To ensure that your desired capacity is met, you might receive Spot Instances from several pools.

Because this strategy only considers instance price and not capacity availability, it might lead to high interruption rates.

The lowest price allocation strategy is only available when using the Amazon CLI. The parameter name is lowest-price for EC2 Fleet and lowestPrice for Spot Fleet.

Number of pools to use

The number of Spot pools across which to allocate your target Spot capacity. Valid only when the allocation strategy is set to lowest price. The fleet selects the lowest priced Spot pools and evenly allocates your target Spot capacity across the number of Spot pools that you specify.

Note that the fleet attempts to draw Spot Instances from the number of pools that you specify on a best effort basis. If a pool runs out of Spot capacity before fulfilling your target capacity, the fleet will continue to fulfill your request by drawing from the next lowest priced pool. To ensure that your target capacity is met, you might receive Spot Instances from more than the number of pools that you specified. Similarly, if most of the pools have no Spot capacity, you might receive your full target capacity from fewer than the number of pools that you specified.

This parameter is only available when specifying the lowest price allocation strategy and only when using the Amazon CLI. The parameter name is InstancePoolsToUseCount for both EC2 Fleet and Spot Fleet.

Allocation strategies for On-Demand Instances

Your launch configuration determines all the possible capacity pools (instance types and Availability Zones) from which EC2 Fleet or Spot Fleet can launch On-Demand Instances. However, when launching instances, the fleet uses the allocation strategy that you specify to pick the specific pools from all your possible pools.

You can specify one of the following allocation strategies for On-Demand Instances:

Lowest price

The On-Demand Instances come from the lowest priced pool that has available capacity. This is the default strategy.

If the lowest priced pool doesn't have available capacity, the On-Demand Instances come from the next lowest priced pool that has available capacity.

If a pool runs out of capacity before fulfilling your desired capacity, the fleet will continue to fulfill your request by drawing from the next lowest priced pool. To ensure that your desired capacity is met, you might receive On-Demand Instances from several pools.

Prioritized

The fleet uses the priority that you assigned to each launch template override, launching instance types in order of the highest priority first. This strategy can't be used with attribute-based instance type selection. For an example of how to use this allocation strategy, see Prioritize instance types for On-Demand capacity.

Choose the appropriate Spot allocation strategy

You can optimize your fleet for your use case by choosing the appropriate Spot allocation strategy.

Balance lowest price and capacity availability

To balance the trade-offs between the lowest priced Spot capacity pools and the Spot capacity pools with the highest capacity availability, we recommend that you use the price capacity optimized allocation strategy. This strategy makes decisions about which pools to request Spot Instances from based on both the price of the pools and the capacity availability of Spot Instances in those pools. This means that we will request Spot Instances from the pools that we believe have the lowest chance of interruption in the near term, while still taking price into consideration.

If your fleet runs resilient and stateless workloads, including containerized applications, microservices, web applications, data and analytics jobs, and batch processing, then use the price capacity optimized allocation strategy for optimal cost savings and capacity availability.

If your fleet runs workloads that might have a higher cost of interruption associated with restarting work, then you should implement checkpointing so that applications can restart from that point if they're interrupted. By using checkpointing, you make the price capacity optimized allocation strategy a good fit for these workloads because it allocates capacity from the lowest priced pools that also offer a low Spot Instance interruption rate.

For example JSON configurations that use the price capacity optimized allocation strategy, see the following:

When workloads have a high cost of interruption

You can optionally use the capacity optimized strategy if you run workloads that either use similarly priced instance types, or where the cost of interruption is so significant that any cost saving is inadequate in comparison to a marginal increase in interruptions. This strategy allocates capacity from the most available Spot capacity pools that offer the possibility of fewer interruptions, which can lower the overall cost of your workload.

When the possibility of interruptions must be minimized but the preference for certain instance types matters, you can express your pool priorities by using the capacity optimized prioritized allocation strategy and then setting the order of instance types to use from highest to lowest priority.

Note that when you set priorities for capacity optimized prioritized, the same priorities are also applied to your On-Demand Instances if the On-Demand allocation strategy is set to prioritized. Also note that, for Spot Fleet, using priorities is supported only if your fleet uses a launch template.

For example JSON configurations that use the capacity optimized allocation strategy, see the following:

For example JSON configurations that use the capacity optimized prioritized allocation strategy, see the following:

When your workload is time flexible and capacity availability is not a factor

If your fleet is small or runs for a short time, you can use price capacity optimized to maximize cost savings while still considering capacity availability.

When your fleet is large or runs for a long time

If your fleet is large or runs for a long time, you can improve the availability of your fleet by distributing the Spot Instances across multiple pools using the diversified strategy. For example, if your fleet specifies 10 pools and a target capacity of 100 instances, the fleet launches 10 Spot Instances in each pool. If the Spot price for one pool exceeds your maximum price for this pool, only 10% of your fleet is affected. Using this strategy also makes your fleet less sensitive to increases in the Spot price in any one pool over time. With the diversified strategy, the fleet does not launch Spot Instances into any pools with a Spot price that is equal to or higher than the On-Demand price.

Maintain target capacity for Spot Instances

After Spot Instances are terminated due to a change in the Spot price or available capacity of a Spot capacity pool, a fleet of type maintain launches replacement Spot Instances. The allocation strategy determines the pools from which the replacement instances are launched, as follows:

  • If the allocation strategy is price capacity optimized, the fleet launches replacement instances in the pools that have the most Spot Instance capacity availability while also taking price into consideration and identifying lowest priced pools with high capacity availability.

  • If the allocation strategy is capacity optimized, the fleet launches replacement instances in the pools that have the most Spot Instance capacity availability.

  • If the allocation strategy is diversified, the fleet distributes the replacement Spot Instances across the remaining pools.

Prioritize instance types for On-Demand capacity

When an EC2 Fleet or Spot Fleet attempts to fulfill your On-Demand capacity, it defaults to launching the lowest priced instance type first. If the On-Demand allocation strategy is set to prioritized, the fleet uses priority to determine which instance type to use first when fulfilling On-Demand capacity. The priority is assigned to the launch template override, and the highest priority is launched first.

Example: Prioritize instance types

In this example, you configure three launch template overrides, each with a different instance type.

The On-Demand price for the instance types range in price. The following are the instance types used in this example, listed in order of price, starting with the least expensive instance type:

  • m4.large – least expensive

  • m5.large

  • m5a.large

If you do not use priority to determine the order, the fleet fulfills the On-Demand capacity by starting with the least expensive instance type.

However, say you have unused m5.large Reserved Instances that you want to use first. You can set the launch template override priority so that the instance types are used in the order of priority, as follows:

  • m5.large – priority 1

  • m4.large – priority 2

  • m5a.large – priority 3