Question

Your team runs BigQuery in an Enterprise edition reservation for a project that executes heavy ETL only between 01:00 and 05:00 UTC each night. Outside that window, the project runs almost no queries. Finance wants to eliminate the cost of idle capacity during the 20 idle hours per day while still guaranteeing fast throughput during the nightly batch. What is the most cost-effective reservation configuration?

Accepted Answer

Set a baseline of 0 slots and configure a max slots (autoscale) value large enough to cover the nightly batch, so slots are provisioned only when queries run.

Answer

Purchase a one-year slot commitment sized to the nightly peak to guarantee capacity every night at a discounted rate.

Answer

Set the baseline equal to the nightly peak slot demand and leave autoscale disabled so capacity is always available.

Answer

Move the project to on-demand pricing and remove the reservation entirely to avoid managing slots.