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Azure

Azure Spot Virtual Machines

Access low-cost unused Azure compute capacity at scale.
Overview

Buy unused Azure compute capacity at deep discounts

Use Spot Virtual Machines to buy unused compute capacity at significant cost savings. Deploy workloads that can handle interruptions and don't need to be completed within a specific period of time. Run workloads for development, testing, quality assurance, advanced analytics, big data, machine learning and AI, batch jobs, and rendering and transcoding of videos, graphics, and images at a very low cost.
  • With Spot Virtual Machines, provision unused Azure compute capacity at deep discounts of up to 90% compared to pay-as-you-go prices. *Pay only up to the maximum price that you set in advance (optional). Spot virtual machine instances are ideal for workloads that can be interrupted, providing scalability while reducing costs. Get special Azure pricing and benefits when running Windows Server workloads on spot virtual machines.
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  • Spot Virtual Machines pricing might change as necessary and will vary based on available capacity. Workloads will be evicted when the price is higher than the maximum price that you agreed to pay or Azure no longer has available compute capacity and needs to reallocate its resources. Get Spot Virtual Machines pricing for a broad range of VMs and VM scale sets. View the price history and the eviction rate for the spot virtual machines you select.
  • On Spot Virtual Machines, only run applications that can handle interruptions and don't need to be completed within a specific timeframe. Spot Virtual Machines are ideal for Dev/test environments, including continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) workloads, select high-performance computing scenarios, batch processing jobs, or visual rendering applications. Big data, analytics, container-based, and large-scale stateless applications are also ideal workloads for Spot Virtual Machines.
Demo

See how Spot Virtual Machines works

Spot Virtual Machines overview

Watch this video to learn when to use Spot Virtual Machines, how to set a maximum price in advance, and how to access the price history and the eviction rate for the VMs you select.
  • Azure Spot Virtual Machines
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Features

Key features

Deep discounts

Buy unused Azure compute capacity at deep discounts to run interruptible workloads.

Set your maximum price

Choose to set a maximum price to run your workloads.

Price history and eviction rate

Look up the price history and eviction rate for Spot Virtual Machines in the Azure portal.

Scale

Run interruptible workloads at scale on a broad range of VMs with Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets.
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Pricing

Optimize costs with Spot Virtual Machines

Purchase unused compute capacity at deep discounts of up to 90% compared to pay-as-you-go prices. *If your workload can tolerate interruptions, and its execution time is flexible, using Spot Virtual Machines can significantly reduce the cost of running your workload in Azure. Run your workloads on Azure VMs or Virtual Machine Scale Sets. *Actual discounts may vary based on region, VM type, and Azure compute capacity available when the workload is deployed.

Built-in security and compliance 

Microsoft has committed to investing $20 billion in cybersecurity over five years.
We employ more than 8,500 security and threat intelligence experts across 77 countries.
Azure has one of the largest compliance certification portfolios in the industry.
Customer stories

See how customers are reducing costs with Spot Virtual Machines

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

  • Spot Virtual Machines is available now to customers buying from the web or through a Microsoft representative. Spot Virtual Machines is also available with Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets.
  • 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 spot virtual machines 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.
  • Spot Virtual Machines replaced Azure low-priority VMs and includes new capabilities, such as variable pricing. Spot Virtual Machines pricing is also available on both single VMs and VM scale sets.
  • For Spot Virtual Machines pricing transparency across all Azure regions and to ensure fairness when allocating available compute capacity, all customers will enter maximum prices in US dollars. You may pay your Azure bill in the local currency for the Euro Zone, Switzerland, Australia, Denmark, Canada, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom, India, or Brazil.
  • The behavior of an evicted spot virtual machine depends on the eviction policy that you select. If the eviction policy is set to Deallocate, only the VM is deallocated, and no VM-associated charges are incurred. However, other resources, such as disk or network, continue to run and accrue charges. Conversely, if the eviction policy is set to Delete, the VM and all associated resources are deleted. If your spot virtual machine is evicted because of capacity and it's part of a scale set, Azure will try to restore it to maintain a target instance count.
  • If the eviction policy is set to Deallocate, any data stored on disk storage is not deleted. However, all the temporary data that is local to the spot virtual machine is deleted. If the eviction policy is set to Delete, data that's stored on local disks and on any attached persistent disk storage is deleted.
  • There is no guaranteed minimum run time for a spot virtual machine. Allocation is based on available unused capacity.
  • If the eviction policy is set to Deallocate, you manually restart the spot virtual machine either in the Azure portal or by using a CLA, such as Azure PowerShell. Depending on the available Azure capacity, the spot virtual machine might be reallocated. Single spot virtual machines are always deallocated by Azure. If your spot virtual machine is evicted because of capacity and is part of a scale set, Azure will try to restore the evicted spot virtual machine to maintain a target instance count. Learn more.
  • Spot Virtual Machines pricing is available for most Azure VMs, except for suppressed core VMs, promo VMs, and burstable VMs (B-series).
  • Yes. However, there are two important differences. First, spot virtual machines can be evicted, but they give you access to unused Azure compute capacity (VMs) at deep discounts compared to pay-as-you-go prices. Also, unlike regular VMs, a service-level agreement (SLA) isn't available for spot virtual machines.
  • 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 when you create a scale set.
  • No. This option isn’t supported at this time.
  • Spot Virtual Machines have a separate quota pool, like pay-as-you-go VMs.
  • 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 Virtual Machines.
  • To review Spot Virtual Machines availability across the various Azure channels—including cloud service providers (CSPs)—refer to the documentation. Visit Partner Center and contact your Microsoft partner account manager if you have any additional questions.
  • Spot Virtual Machines will only be supported for 'virtualMachineConfiguration' pools and not 'cloudServiceConfiguration' pools. Learn more about Spot Virtual Machines on Batch.
  • Yes, this capability is available to customers in the Azure portal.
  • Spot Virtual Machines already have discounted pricing, and the cost of these virtual machines are also variable in nature. Therefore, there is no additional discount for Spot Virtual Machines under the Enterprise Agreement (EA) and billed at pay-as-you-go rates.
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  1. *
    Actual discounts may vary based on region, virtual machine (VM) type, and Azure compute capacity available when the workload is deployed.
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