AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate (legacy) — Question 556
A company needs to run a distributed application that processes large amount of data across multiple Amazon EC2 instances. The application is designed to tolerate processing interruptions.
What is the MOST cost-effective Amazon EC2 pricing model for these requirements?
Answer options
- A. Dedicated Hosts
- B. On-Demand Instances
- C. Reserved Instances
- D. Spot Instances
Correct answer: D
Explanation
Spot Instances are the most cost-effective option because they leverage spare Amazon EC2 capacity at steep discounts, which is ideal for workloads that can tolerate interruptions. On-Demand and Dedicated Hosts are significantly more expensive and do not capitalize on the application's fault-tolerant design. Reserved Instances require a long-term commitment, making them less flexible and potentially more costly than Spot Instances for this specific use case.