Preemptible VM Instances for Cost Optimization

Preemptible VM Instances

Question

You need to reduce the cost of virtual machines (VM) for your organization.

After reviewing different options, you decide to leverage preemptible VM instances.

Which application is suitable for preemptible VMs?

Answers

Explanations

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A. B. C. D.

D.

https://cloud.google.com/preemptible-vms

Preemptible VM instances are short-lived and inexpensive virtual machines that are available for a fraction of the cost of regular VM instances. However, they can be interrupted at any time, typically after running for up to 24 hours, as they are reclaimed by the cloud provider when capacity is needed elsewhere. Therefore, preemptible VMs are not suitable for all applications, especially those that require sustained, long-running computing resources.

A. A scalable in-memory caching system: Preemptible VM instances can be used for in-memory caching systems that can quickly rebuild their cache in case of failure or eviction. Since these systems are typically stateless and their data is transient, a temporary interruption of a VM instance is unlikely to cause any permanent data loss or operational disruption. Moreover, preemptible VMs can provide a cost-effective way to scale such systems to handle peak loads.

B. The organization's public-facing website: Preemptible VM instances are not recommended for public-facing websites or other critical applications that require high availability, reliability, and consistent performance. Such applications typically require redundant infrastructure, load balancing, and failover mechanisms to ensure uninterrupted service. Preemptible VMs cannot guarantee these levels of service, as they can be terminated at any time, leaving the website or application unavailable.

C. A distributed, eventually consistent NoSQL database cluster with sufficient quorum: Preemptible VM instances can be used for non-critical NoSQL databases that are distributed, eventually consistent, and have sufficient quorum. These databases are designed to handle data replication, synchronization, and conflict resolution across multiple nodes, making them resilient to failures and interruptions. However, it is important to ensure that the quorum is sufficient to maintain data consistency, and that the database can recover quickly from a VM instance termination.

D. A GPU-accelerated video rendering platform that retrieves and stores videos in a storage bucket: Preemptible VM instances can be used for batch processing tasks such as video rendering that are not time-critical and can be restarted if necessary. Such tasks can be run on preemptible VMs to reduce costs, especially if they involve resource-intensive workloads such as GPU acceleration. However, it is important to ensure that the data is backed up and retrievable from a storage bucket in case of VM interruption.

In summary, preemptible VM instances can be a cost-effective option for certain applications, especially those that are non-critical, stateless, distributed, and can tolerate interruptions. However, they are not suitable for applications that require high availability, reliability, and consistent performance.