Question #1213
A company operates a distributed data analytics workload on AWS that is resilient to instance interruptions and can restart failed tasks. The workload requires significant compute resources, and the company wants to minimize costs without compromising fault tolerance. Which AWS service should they use?
Amazon Redshift
AWS Lambda
Amazon EC2 Spot Instances
Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances
Explanation
The correct answer is C. Amazon EC2 Spot Instances.
Why C is Correct:
- Cost Efficiency: Spot Instances offer the lowest cost (up to 90% cheaper than On-Demand) by leveraging unused AWS capacity.
- Fault Tolerance: The workload is designed to handle interruptions and restart tasks, making it compatible with Spot Instances' potential interruptions. This ensures minimal disruption and cost savings.
Why Other Options Are Incorrect:
- A. Amazon Redshift: A data warehousing service, not designed for general-purpose compute workloads.
- B. AWS Lambda: Serverless compute with execution time limits (15 minutes), unsuitable for long-running or resource-intensive analytics tasks.
- D. EC2 Reserved Instances: Requires upfront commitment for steady-state workloads, offering less cost savings than Spot Instances for interruptible workloads.
Key Points:
- Use Spot Instances for fault-tolerant, distributed workloads to maximize cost savings.
- Ensure workloads can restart tasks to handle Spot interruptions gracefully.
- Avoid Reserved Instances or Lambda for variable, compute-heavy, or interruption-tolerant use cases.
Answer
The correct answer is: C