#What Are Spot Servers?
Spot servers are a pool of spare on-demand servers that can be deployed for a special discount price, but with the caveat that Cherry Servers reserves the right to terminate the spot server at any time, with two minutes of notice, when additional capacity is required for Cherry Servers’ on-demand services.
When there are a significant number of spare Cherry Servers on-demand servers, we assign these machines to a spot server pool, enabling them to be ordered for up to 70% off compared to the servers’ standard rate. All fees for spot servers are billed at an hourly rate.
Spot servers are ideal for stateless, fault-tolerant and self-aware applications, allowing you to significantly lower your infrastructure costs without compromising performance.
Cherry Servers offers no guarantee that your spot server will be active for any certain length of time, and service may face interruptions. The Service Level Agreement (SLA) does not apply to spot servers. To accommodate usage, Cherry Servers has a loose spot server termination policy to make spot services as smooth as possible.
#How to Order a Spot Server
Spot servers billing is intermittently available for select servers in all regions that meet our criteria to be added to the pool. Availability must be checked manually.
Spot server billing can be ordered on deployment through the client portal, or through Cherry Servers API.
Through the client portal, if spot server billing is available it will be shown in the deployment menu under the billing options dropdown menu.
Spot server billing will continuously deplete your team balance to keep the server running, so ensure that it remains topped up.
#Spot Server Termination Policy
Cherry Servers spot servers are not subject to auction, and do not have a time cap for usage. You may use the spot server for as long as the underlying hardware is not required for Cherry Servers’ regular on-demand usage.
If Cherry Servers on-demand server capacity drops too low, we will initiate the spot server termination process, which will close as many Spot Servers as required to meet on-demand order requirements. Termination always begins with the oldest spot servers, sequentially terminating by start date.
#Termination Notice
When the spot server termination process is initiated, you will be notified two minutes before it begins, giving you time to finish your work, and save any important data to persistent storage.
In order to see this notification you must monitor each spot server individually via Cherry Servers API by querying the servers API endpoint, written below, using your specific server ID in place of “{serverId}”.
https://api.cherryservers.com/v1/servers/{serverId}/termination-date
This will provide you with the termination_date parameter
When the termination process is inactive, the termination_date parameter will be set to “None”. Once the termination process has been initiated, the termination_date parameter will be set to a specific termination date and time which is typically two minutes from initiation. We recommend immediate action to ensure safe and graceful server termination.