A Guide to AWS Instance Scheduler

AWS Instance Scheduler is a popular option for saving up a large portion of the cost of computing services in situations where there are predictable planned times for operating compute services. In other words, since no clients are accessing particular environments during the period, it’s normal for development environments or workloads to be shut down during non-working times. 

By evaluating when the instances are more widely used, you can implement more complex schedules, or even apply an always-stopped schedule and then start up the instances when you need them. 

How We Reduced AWS Bill from $2,000 to $200

Background

A while back I worked on one Batch processing application, let’s call it Project X.

The way Project X used to work is whenever the user schedules a new job, EC2 Spot (t2.2xlarge) would be requested and that EC2 Spot will process that particular job. Once a job is finished that Spot instance would terminate itself.