Amazon GameLift is a service offered by AWS for deploying, managing, and scaling dedicated game servers designed for session-based multiplayer games. Recently, we introduced two significant enhancements to this service: FleetIQ and Spot Instances. Spot Instances provide access to excess AWS compute capacity at discounts of up to 90% compared to On-Demand pricing. With the help of FleetIQ, a new feature within Amazon GameLift Queues, you can achieve these savings while ensuring high availability for your game servers. FleetIQ intelligently allocates new sessions to game servers by considering player latencies, instance costs, and Spot interruption rates.
Spot Instances deliver the same high-performance hardware as On-Demand Instances, but at a fraction of the cost. Unlike the fixed pricing of On-Demand Instances, Spot prices fluctuate based on the current supply and demand dynamics for each instance type across different regions. Amazon sets these Spot prices, which adjust gradually according to long-term trends in supply and demand. Importantly, Spot prices will never exceed the prices of On-Demand Instances.
To help forecast the cost of utilizing Spot Instances, customers can access historical pricing data for each instance type and region through the Amazon GameLift console. While these Spot Instances provide significant savings, they can be interrupted by AWS with just two minutes of notice when capacity is needed back. This notification period allows you to either migrate or shut down your games running on those instances. To mitigate the impact of Spot interruptions, we developed FleetIQ, which tracks Spot interruption rates and uses this data to automatically assign games to instances with lower interruption frequencies.
To leverage the benefits of Spot Instances and FleetIQ, you can configure Queues in the Amazon GameLift console or via API, incorporating multiple fleets of both Spot and On-Demand Instances. By diversifying your fleets within each Queue, FleetIQ has more options to enhance latency, manage interruption rates, and reduce costs. When initiating a new game session, FleetIQ selects the region with the lowest latency for each player, then identifies the fleet that offers the lowest interruption rate and cost.
This combination of FleetIQ and Spot Instances equips you with powerful tools to reduce expenses while still delivering an exceptional experience for your players. To further explore Amazon GameLift Spot Instances and FleetIQ, check out this informative blog post here. For expert insights on the topic, visit this resource, where you will find valuable information. Additionally, consider exploring this excellent resource that can enhance your understanding of AWS services and their management.
Leave a Reply