Classification of price fluctuations for Spot Instances on Amazon EC2

Abstract

Amazon EC2 provides Spot Instances that may change prices with time. To use them more efficiently, it is necessary to understand the Spot price fluctuations. This study evaluates the Spot price fluctuations with normalized values by On-Demand prices and Historical Volatilities (HVs). Then, using evaluation results, we classify the Instances into five groups. Each group has features of the Spot price fluctuations. We conclude that the groups that have a small fluctuation range are able to bid easily. Therefore, for the groups that have a large fluctuation range, we need more detailed evaluation standards.