Question

A financial services company runs a fleet of Compute Engine VMs supporting a customer-facing trading platform. Analysis of the last 18 months shows a stable baseline of 40 n2-standard-8 instances running 24/7, with occasional bursts to 65 instances during market volatility. The finance team wants to reduce Compute Engine spend without sacrificing the ability to scale during bursts, and they want the commitment strategy to survive changes in machine family if engineering later re-architects onto a different VM type. Which approach best optimizes cost while preserving flexibility?

Accepted Answer

Purchase spend-based (flexible) committed use discounts covering the baseline compute spend, and let burst capacity run on on-demand pricing.

Answer

Purchase resource-based committed use discounts (CUDs) for 40 n2-standard-8 instances for 3 years, and let burst capacity above the baseline run on on-demand pricing.

Answer

Run the entire fleet, including the baseline, on Spot VMs to maximize discount rates.

Answer

Purchase resource-based CUDs sized for the peak of 65 n2-standard-8 instances for 1 year to guarantee coverage of all usage.