spot-instance-utility

spot-instance-utility is a tool over the aws sdk's ec2-describe-spot-price-history tool which analyzes a window of spot prices for the given instance types and regions and produces CSV output of their stability and pricing.

Requirements

You have to have the aws tools installed.

Usage

spot-instance-utility --help
spot-instance-utility - Tool for selecting EC2 spot instances based on historic
prices

Usage: spot-instance-utility [-d|--duration DURATION] [INSTANCE_PAIR]
                             [-r|--region REGION]
                             [-p|--product-description PRODUCT_DESCRIPTION]
                             [-s|--sigmas SIGMAS]
  Analyze spot instance history for the given INSTANCE_PAIRs

Available options:
  -h,--help                Show this help text
  -d,--duration DURATION   Duration of days or weeks, such as 3d or 2w
  INSTANCE_PAIR            Pair of instance type and optional count, defaulting
                           to one. Instance types:
                           c1.medium|c1.xlarge|c3.4xlarge|c3.8xlarge|cc1.4xlarge|cc2.8xlarge|cg1.4xlarge|cr1.8xlarge|g2.2xlarge|m1.large|m1.medium|m1.small|m1.xlarge|m2.2xlarge|m2.4xlarge|m2.xlarge|m3.2xlarge|m3.xlarge|t1.micro
  -r,--region REGION       Region, which will be expanded into availability
                           zones. Can be repated. Options:
                           ap-central-1|ap-northeast-1|ap-southeast-1|ap-southeast-2|eu-west-1|sa-east-1|us-east-1|us-west-1|us-west-2
  -p,--product-description PRODUCT_DESCRIPTION
                           EC2 product description string. Options:
                           Linux/UNIX|Linux/UNIX (Amazon VPC)|SUSE Linux|SUSE
                           Linux (Amazon VPC)|Windows|Windows (Amazon
                           VPC) (default: Linux/UNIX)
  -s,--sigmas SIGMAS       Stability is measured in number of times deviated >
                           SIGMAS sigmas from the most frequent
                           value. (default: 3)

Instance pairs are a pair of the instance types and how many you would use. The idea is you give it several instance types and set their quantities so that they are roughly equivalent (i.e. 10 tiny instances, 1 extra large) so that you are doing an apples-to-apples comparison.

Output:

spot-instance-utility m1.xlarge,2 m3.xlarge -d 1w
"AvailabilityZone"      "AverageCost"   "InstanceType"  "TimesDeviated"
"us-east-1a"    "3.21e-2"       "m3.xlarge"     "0"
"us-east-1e"    "6.4e-2"        "m1.xlarge"     "0"
"us-east-1a"    "8.912762278978355e-2"  "m1.xlarge"     "2"
"us-east-1b"    "0.10720401225114828"   "m1.xlarge"     "43"
"us-east-1c"    "0.2724191843393155"    "m1.xlarge"     "52"
"us-east-1b"    "0.4501"        "m3.xlarge"     "0"
"us-east-1e"    "0.4501"        "m3.xlarge"     "0"
"us-east-1c"    "1.2923384615384612"    "m3.xlarge"     "0"

Status

Currently a work in process. Some TODOs:

1. Better testing on analysis.
2. Better heuristics on ordering. Currently sorts by price ascending and then stability descending. This is not as robust ast it could be
3. Advisor capability.