A company is running big data analytics and massive parallel computations on its AWS test and development servers. The company can tolerate occasional downtime. What is the MOST cost- effective Amazon

Question

Options

• AOn-Demand Instances
• BSpot Instances
• CReserved Instances
• DSavings Plans

• A
  2% (1)
• B
  82% (41)
• C
  6% (3)
• D
  10% (5)

Explanation

Spot Instances are the most cost-effective choice because they allow you to bid on unused AWS EC2 capacity at discounts of up to 90% compared to On-Demand pricing - making them ideal for workloads like big data analytics and parallel computing that can be interrupted and restarted without major consequences (i.e., the company "can tolerate occasional downtime").

Why the distractors are wrong:

• On-Demand Instances (A) are flexible but the most expensive pay-as-you-go option - no discount for tolerating interruptions.
• Reserved Instances (C) offer significant discounts (up to 72%) but require a 1–3 year commitment, making them better suited for steady, predictable workloads, not test/dev environments.
• Savings Plans (D) also provide discounts in exchange for a usage commitment over 1–3 years - again, better for consistent, long-term workloads rather than flexible test/dev scenarios.

Memory Tip: Think "Spot = Savings for Sporadic workloads." Whenever an exam question mentions fault-tolerant, interruptible, batch, or big data workloads where downtime is acceptable, Spot Instances is almost always the cost-effective answer. Reserved Instances and Savings Plans = long-term commitments; Spot = cheap but interruptible.

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