An organization runs a batch data analysis workload on a virtual machine (VM). The workload can be easily restarted without losing work, and is not time critical. Organizations must choose the lowest

Preemptible and Spot VMs are short-lived compute instances available at up to 91% discount compared to standard VMs. Because the workload can be restarted without data loss and has no time constraint, it perfectly fits the requirements for this lower-cost instance type.

A custom VM in pay-as-you-go mode offers flexibility in resource sizing but does not provide the deep discount of Preemptible or Spot VMs, making it more expensive.

A standard VM in pay-as-you-go mode is the baseline on-demand pricing with no discount, making it the most expensive option among the VM choices listed.

Cloud Functions are designed for event-driven, short-duration code execution and are not suited for sustained batch data analysis workloads that require VM-level compute.