Guided Lab: Creating a Spot VM Instance

Jon-Bonso

Description

Spot VMs in Google Cloud offer substantial cost savings—up to 91% off for many machine types, GPUs, TPUs, and Local SSDs—compared to standard VMs. Because they run on spare Compute Engine capacity, they can be preempted at any time when resources are needed elsewhere. During preemption, Compute Engine will either stop the VM (default) or delete it, depending on the termination action you set. Availability varies with overall demand, and Spot VMs have no guaranteed runtime unless you configure a time limit.
For workloads that are fault‑tolerant and can handle interruptions, Spot VMs can dramatically lower costs. A common example is batch processing: if some VMs are preempted, the job may slow down but continues running. This allows you to complete tasks without overloading existing VMs or paying full price for additional standard instances.

In this guided lab, you will learn how to create a Spot VM instance in Google Cloud and verify that the instance is running.

Prerequisites

To ensure the successful completion of this lab, you must have prior experience in creating VM instances and be familiar with their essential components. If you feel that your knowledge in this area is insufficient, we highly recommend taking this lab to gain the necessary understanding:

Guided Lab: How to Launch a GCP Compute Engine Linux Instance

Objectives

In this lab, you will:

Create a Spot VM instance.
Connect to the instance via SSH.
Verify that the instance is running and accessible.

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Lab Steps

Create a Spot VM Instance

1. In the Google Cloud Console, go to Compute Engine → VM instances → Create Instance.

2. Configure the VM:

Name: Enter your desired instance name.
Machine type: e2-micro (preset).
VM provisioning model: Spot (preemptible).
Determines how long your VMs will run. For this lab, no need to configure this.
- Set a time limit for the VM → This option lets you define a maximum runtime (for example, 1 hour, 6 hours, or 24 hours). Once the time limit is reached, the VM will automatically be terminated. This is useful for predictable batch jobs or workloads where you know exactly how long the VM is needed. The choice is permanent once the VM is created.
- Gracefully shut down the VM → Instead of being abruptly terminated, Google Cloud sends a preemption notice (about 30 seconds) and allows the VM to shut down cleanly. This gives your applications a chance to save state, write logs, or perform cleanup before the VM stops or is deleted.
Termination action: Stop or Delete (choose based on your preference). For this exercise, choose Stop.
- Stop preserves the VM for later restart
- Delete permanently removes it when preempted.
Leave other configurations at their default values.

3. Once done, click the Create button.

Connect to the Spot VM

1. From the VM instances page, click SSH next to your Spot VM.

2. Run a simple command to verify connectivity:

hostname

This should return the VM’s hostname.

Congratulations! You have successfully created a Spot VM instance in Google Cloud. You configured its availability policies, connected via SSH, and verified that the instance is running. This workflow demonstrates how Spot VMs provide a cost-effective option for running fault-tolerant workloads, with the trade-off that they can be preempted at any time. By understanding options like time limits, graceful shutdown, and termination actions, you can design workloads that balance savings with reliability.