Use Spot/Preemptible Instances

Overview

Depending on your project location, BioData Catalyst powered by Seven Bridges is using the appropriate cloud provider (Google Cloud and AWS) spare capacity resources at a significant discount.

If your project is set on some of the available Google Cloud locations, this option will be marked as Preemptible instances on the visual interface.

If your project is set on some of the available AWS locations, this option will be marked as Spot instances on the visual interface.

The setting can be applied at the project and task level, with the latter overriding the former.

Data Studio will still use on-demand instances when running, even if the Spot/Preemptible Instance feature is turned on for that project.

When creating a new project (AWS location), the default setting for Spot Instances is On.

When creating a new project (Google Cloud location), the default setting for Preemptible Instances is Off.

Activate Spot/Preemptible Instances for a Project

Only project administrators can activate Spot/Preemptible Instances within that project. Spot/Preemptible Instances can be activated while creating a project, or subsequently within project settings following the procedure below:

1. Go to your project dashboard.
2. Click the Settings tab.
3. Under Execution Settings switch Spot/Preemptible Instances to On.

Activate Spot/Preemptible Instances for a Draft Task

Note that settings at task level override project-level settings.

1. Create a draft task
2. On the draft task page, switch Spot/Preemptible Instances to On underneath the draft task title.

View Spot/Preemptible Instance Settings for an Executed Task

An executed task set to use Spot/Preemptible Instances will be labelled Spot/Preemptible Instances: On on the task page underneath the task title.

On the task stats page you get a more detailed view of the executed task, with a job-wise breakdown of the instances used. Jobs that ran on Spot/Preemptible Instances are labelled spot/preemptible next to the instance name.