Preemptible Virtual Machines
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Low cost VMs
Preemptible VMs are highly affordable, short-lived compute instances suitable for batch jobs and fault-tolerant workloads. Preemptible VMs offer the same machine types and options as regular compute instances and last for up to 24 hours. If your applications are fault tolerant and can withstand possible instance preemptions, then preemptible instances can reduce your Compute Engine costs by up to 80%!
What's new
Predictable and low cost
Preemptible VMs are up to 80% cheaper than regular instances. Pricing is fixed so you will always get low cost and financial predictability, without worrying about variable market pricing.
Expand your batch processing
Supplement your regular VMs with lower-cost, preemptible instances to finish your compute-intensive work faster, saving you time and money. Throw preemptible VMs at fault-tolerant workloads such as high performance computing, big data and analytics, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), rendering/transcoding, and testing.
Get more from your containers
Containers are naturally stateless and fault tolerant, making them a great fit for preemptible VMs! You save on your containerized workloads today with these affordable compute instances. Take advantage of Google Kubernetes Engine for your containerized workloads and Managed Instance Groups to painlessly and seamlessly recover from preemptions.
Enable it instantly
Simply add --preemptible to the gcloud command line and you're off to the races. There's no bidding to code for, and with per-second billing, just shut down your VMs as soon as you're done.
gcloud compute instances create my-vm \
--preemptible --zone us-central1-b
Features
Simple configuration
Create a preemptible instance simply by flipping a bit via command, API, or developer console.
Easy extendability
Attach GPUs and local SSDs to preemptible instances for additional performance and savings.
Graceful shutdown
Compute Engine gives you 30 seconds to shut down when you're preempted, letting you save your work in progress for later.
Large scale computing
Spin up as many instances as you need and turn them off when you're done. You only pay for what you use.
Quickly reclaim capacity
Managed instance groups automatically recreate your instances when they're preempted (if capacity is available).
Fixed pricing
Preemptible VMs have fixed pricing up to 80% off regular instances. They show up on your bill separately so you'll see just how much you're saving.
Technical resources
Preemptible VMs docs
Preemptible VMs case study
Introducing Preemptible GPUs
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