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  3. Azure Spot Virtual Machines

Azure Spot Virtual Machines

Scalable compute capacity at deep discounts

Deep discounts

Buy unused compute capacity at deep discounts

Capped prices

Pay up to the price you agree to in advance

Deployment options

Run interruptible workloads at scale on VMs and VMSS

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Get more cloud at a lower cost

With Azure Spot virtual machines (Spot VMs), you can access unused Azure compute capacity at deep discounts – up to 90 per cent compared to pay-as-you-go prices.* You pay up to the maximum price that you optionally agree to in advance. View the price history and the eviction rate for the Spot VMs that you select. Spot VMs are ideal for workloads that can be interrupted, providing scalability while reducing costs. You get unique Azure pricing and benefits when running Windows Server workloads on Spot VMs.

*Actual discounts may vary based on region, VM type and Azure compute capacity available when the workload is deployed.

Select VM or VM scale sets

Get Spot VM pricing for Azure VMs or VM scale sets (VMSS). Select the right deployment model based on your preferences and the characteristics of your application.

Spot VM prices will change as necessary and will vary based on available capacity. Workloads will be evicted when:

  • The current price is higher than the maximum price that you agree to pay.
  • Azure no longer has available compute capacity and needs to reallocate its resources.

Run recommended workloads

Like their low-priority VMs predecessors, on Spot VMs, only run workloads that can handle interruptions and don’t need to be completed within a specific time frame. Spot VMs are ideal for the following types of workloads:

  • High-performance computing scenarios, batch processing jobs or visual rendering applications.
  • Dev/test environments, including continuous integration and continuous delivery workloads.
  • Big data, analytics, container-based and large-scale stateless applications.

Make the most of Azure to reduce your cloud spend

Azure reservations, Spot VMs, Azure Hybrid Benefit, pre-paid Linux plans and additional platform capabilities can help substantially reduce your cloud bill. Our comprehensive approach will help you maximise your “Azure return on investment”.

Watch the video
InMobi

"InMobi runs one of our largest platforms, the InMobi Exchange, entirely on Azure. Leveraging the Azure Spot VM offerings, we've been able to rewire our application stack to be fully stateless and it's been a real game changer with respect to making it cost efficient. As of now, we've moved the majority of our serving and data processing compute needs to Azure Spot VMs. And by doing so, we have been able to realize nearly 50-60 percent cost efficiencies on our compute needs, and that's been a massive help in making our business more economically efficient."

Prasanna Prasad, Senior Vice President, Engineering, InMobi
rescale

"We constantly hear from our customers that they want flexibility in their HPC environment. Flexibility in VM types, available capacity, and even up-front commitment. Azure's Spot offering is exciting because it provides that flexibility, which combined with Rescale provides cost efficiencies and reduced preemption risk."

Gerhard Esterhuizen, VP of Engineering at Rescale and Brian Tecklenburg, VP of HPC Marketing at Rescale
rescale

"We benchmark performance across cloud providers, and Azure has consistently been among the top performers. Azure Spot VMs now allow our customers to use the best infrastructure available in an ad-hoc fashion. Azure Spot VMs, combined with Rescale's HPC job orchestration and automated checkpoint restarts, help mitigate preemption risks. As a result, our customers can finally use the best cloud infrastructure, whenever they want."

Mulyanto Poort, VP of HPC Engineering at Rescale

Documentation

Spot VMs documentation windows

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Spot VMs documentation Linux

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Spot VMs on scale sets documentation

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Frequently asked questions about Spot pricing

  • The preview of Azure low-priority VMs on scale sets has been discontinued and has been retired as of 3 February 2020. Spot VMs have replaced Azure low-priority VMs and will include new capabilities, such as variable pricing. Spot pricing is also available on both single VMs and VMSS.
  • Spot VMs are now available on VMs and VMSS to customers buying from the web or through a Microsoft representative.

  • Workloads are evicted when Azure no longer has available compute capacity and must reallocate its resources.

    Workloads will also be evicted when the current price exceeds the maximum price that you agreed to pay before the VMs were allocated.

    Additionally, when you subscribe to scheduled events, you get a notification 30 seconds before your workload is evicted. Refer to the documentation for more information.

  • For pricing transparency across all Azure regions and to ensure fairness when allocating available compute capacity, all of our customers will enter maximum prices in US dollars. You may pay your Azure bill in one of the supported local currencies below.

    AUD
    Australian dollar
    TWD
    Taiwan dollar
    GBP
    British pound
    CAD
    Canadian dollar
    CNY
    Chinese yuan
    DKK
    Danish krone
    EUR
    Euro
    INR
    Indian rupee
    JPY
    Japanese yen
    KRW
    Korean won
    NZD
    New Zealand dollar
    NOK
    Norwegian krone
    RUB
    Russian ruble
    SEK
    Swedish krona
    CHF
    Swiss franc
  • If you’re running Spot VMs on VMSS or Single Spot VM, it depends on the eviction policy that you select. If the eviction policy is set to Deallocate, only the VM will be deallocated, and no VM-associated charges will be incurred. However, other resources (such as disk or network) will continue to run and accrue charges. Conversely, if the eviction policy is set to Delete, the VM and all associated resources will be deleted.
  • For Spot VMs on VMSS, if the eviction policy is set to Deallocate, any data stored on disk storage will not be deleted. However, all the temporary data that is local to the VM will be deleted. Single Spot VMs are always deallocated.
    If the eviction policy is set to Delete, data that’s stored on local disks and on any attached persistent disk storage will be deleted. This option isn’t available on single VMs.
  • There is no guaranteed minimum run time for a Spot VM. Allocation is based on available unused capacity.
  • If the eviction policy is set to Deallocate, you manually restart the VM either in the Azure portal or by using a command-line interface such as Azure PowerShell. Depending on the available Azure capacity, the VM may be reallocated. Single Spot VMs are always deallocated by Azure.
  • Spot pricing is available across most Azure VMs, except for suppressed core VMs, Promo VMs and burstable VMs (B-series).
  • Yes. The difference is that Spot VMs give you a new purchasing option to buy unused Azure compute capacity (VMs) at deep discounts compared to pay-as-you-go prices. Unlike pay-as-you-go pricing, a service-level agreement (SLA) isn’t available for Spot VMs. See the product terms for more information.
  • Run workloads that can be interrupted and that don’t have to be completed within a specific amount of time.
  • No. You can only set the Spot pricing flag at creation time.
  • No. An Azure VMSS can’t support more than one type of VM.
  • Spot VMs have a separate quota pool such as pay-as-you-go VMs. Learn more in the Azure subscription and service limits, quotas and constraints documentation.
  • Yes. Use the standard quota increase process – the same that you use for pay-as-you-go VMs – to submit a request to increase your quota for Spot VMs. Learn more in the Azure subscription and service limits, quotas and constraints documentation.
  • To review Azure Spot VMs availability across the various Azure channels – including Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) – please refer to our documentation. Please visit Partner Center and contact your Microsoft partner account manager if you have any additional questions.
  • Batch currently supports low-priority VMs and will be updated to support Spot VMs, including the ability to set the maximum price. Spot VMs will only be supported for ‘virtualMachineConfiguration’ pools and not ‘cloudServiceConfiguration’ pools. Learn more about Spot VMs on Batch.
  • Yes, this capability is available to our customers in the Azure portal.

Compute capacity at deep discounts