Instance purchasing options
Amazon EC2 provides the following purchasing options to enable you to optimize your costs based on your needs:
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On-Demand Instances – Pay, by the second, for the instances that you launch.
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Savings Plans – Reduce your Amazon EC2 costs by making a commitment to a consistent amount of usage, in USD per hour, for a term of 1 or 3 years.
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Reserved Instances – Reduce your Amazon EC2 costs by making a commitment to a consistent instance configuration, including instance type and Region, for a term of 1 or 3 years.
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Spot Instances – Request unused EC2 instances, which can reduce your Amazon EC2 costs significantly.
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Dedicated Hosts – Pay for a physical host that is fully dedicated to running your instances, and bring your existing per-socket, per-core, or per-VM software licenses to reduce costs.
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Dedicated Instances – Pay, by the hour, for instances that run on single-tenant hardware.
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Capacity Reservations – Reserve capacity for your EC2 instances in a specific Availability Zone for any duration.
If you require a capacity reservation, purchase Reserved Instances or Capacity Reservations
for a specific
Availability Zone. Spot Instances are a cost-effective choice if you can be flexible
about when
your applications run and if they can be interrupted. Dedicated Hosts or Dedicated
Instances can help you address
compliance requirements and reduce costs by using your existing server-bound software
licenses. For more information, see Amazon EC2 Pricing
For more information about Savings Plans, see the Savings Plans User Guide.
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Determine the instance lifecycle
The lifecycle of an instance starts when it is launched and ends when it is terminated. The purchasing option that you choose affects the lifecycle of the instance. For example, an On-Demand Instance runs when you launch it and ends when you terminate it. A Spot Instance runs as long as capacity is available and your maximum price is higher than the Spot price.
Use the following procedure to determine the lifecycle of an instance.
To determine the instance lifecycle using the AWS CLI
Use the following describe-instances command:
aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids
i-1234567890abcdef0
If the instance is running on a Dedicated Host, the output contains the following information:
"Tenancy": "host"
If the instance is a Dedicated Instance, the output contains the following information:
"Tenancy": "dedicated"
If the instance is a Spot Instance, the output contains the following information:
"InstanceLifecycle": "spot"
Otherwise, the output does not contain InstanceLifecycle
.