# Calculate the Spot placement score
You can calculate a Spot placement score based on target capacity and compute requirements. For more information, see [How Spot placement score works](how-sps-works.md).
**Required permissions**
Ensure that you have the required permissions. For more information, see [Required permissions for Spot placement score](sps-iam-permission.md).
**Topics**
+ [Calculate using instance attributes](#sps-specify-instance-attributes-console)
+ [Calculate using instance types](#sps-specify-instance-types-console)
+ [Calculate using the AWS CLI](#calculate-sps-cli)
**Looking for an automated solution?** Instead of following the manual steps in this user guide, you can build a Spot placement score tracker dashboard that automatically captures and stores the scores in Amazon CloudWatch. For more information, see [Guidance for Building a Spot Placement Score Tracker Dashboard on AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/guidance/building-a-spot-placement-score-tracker-dashboard-on-aws/).
## Calculate using instance attributes
**To calculate a Spot placement score by specifying instance attributes**
1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at [https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/](https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/).
1. In the navigation pane, choose **Spot Requests**.
1. Choose the down arrow next to **Request Spot Instances** and choose **Calculate Spot Placement Score**.
1. Choose **Enter requirements**.
1. For **Target capacity**, enter your desired capacity in terms of the number of **instances** or **vCPUs**, or the amount of **memory (MiB)**.
1. For **Instance type requirements**, to specify your compute requirements and let Amazon EC2 identify the optimal instance types with these requirements, choose **Specify instance attributes that match your compute requirements**.
1. For **vCPUs**, enter the desired minimum and maximum number of vCPUs. To specify no limit, select **No minimum**, **No maximum**, or both.
1. For **Memory (GiB)**, enter the desired minimum and maximum amount of memory. To specify no limit, select **No minimum**, **No maximum**, or both.
1. For **CPU architecture**, select the required instance architecture.
1. (Optional) For **Additional instance attributes**, you can optionally specify one or more attributes to express your compute requirements in more detail. Each additional attribute adds a further constraint to your request. You can omit the additional attributes; when omitted, the default values are used. For a description of each attribute and their default values, see [get-spot-placement-scores](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/get-spot-placement-scores.html).
1. (Optional) To view the instance types with your specified attributes, expand **Preview matching instance types**. To exclude instance types from being used in the placement evaluation, select the instances and then choose **Exclude selected instance types**.
1. Choose **Load placement scores**, and review the results.
1. (Optional) To display the Spot placement score for specific Regions, for **Regions to evaluate**, select the Regions to evaluate, and then choose **Calculate placement scores**.
1. (Optional) To display the Spot placement score for the Availability Zones in the displayed Regions, select the **Provide placement scores per Availability Zone** checkbox. A list of scored Availability Zones is useful if you want to launch all of your Spot capacity into a single Availability Zone.
1. (Optional) To edit your compute requirements and get a new placement score, choose **Edit**, make the necessary adjustments, and then choose **Calculate placement scores**.
## Calculate using instance types
**To calculate a Spot placement score by specifying instance types**
1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at [https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/](https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/).
1. In the navigation pane, choose **Spot Requests**.
1. Choose the down arrow next to **Request Spot Instances** and choose **Calculate Spot Placement Score**.
1. Choose **Enter requirements**.
1. For **Target capacity**, enter your desired capacity in terms of the number of **instances** or **vCPUs**, or the amount of **memory (MiB)**.
1. For **Instance type requirements**, to specify the instance types to use, choose **Manually select instance types**.
1. Choose **Select instance types**, select the instance types to use, and then choose **Select**. To quickly find instance types, you can use the filter bar to filter the instance types by different properties.
1. Choose **Load placement scores**, and review the results.
1. (Optional) To display the Spot placement score for specific Regions, for **Regions to evaluate**, select the Regions to evaluate, and then choose **Calculate placement scores**.
1. (Optional) To display the Spot placement score for the Availability Zones in the displayed Regions, select the **Provide placement scores per Availability Zone** checkbox. A list of scored Availability Zones is useful if you want to launch all of your Spot capacity into a single Availability Zone.
1. (Optional) To edit the list of instance types and get a new placement score, choose **Edit**, make the necessary adjustments, and then choose **Calculate placement scores**.
## Calculate using the AWS CLI
**To calculate the Spot placement score**
1. (Optional) To generate all of the possible parameters that can be specified for the Spot placement score configuration, use the [get-spot-placement-scores](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/get-spot-placement-scores.html) command and the `--generate-cli-skeleton` parameter.
```
aws ec2 get-spot-placement-scores \
--region us-east-1 \
--generate-cli-skeleton
```
The following is example output.
```
{
"InstanceTypes": [
""
],
"TargetCapacity": 0,
"TargetCapacityUnitType": "vcpu",
"SingleAvailabilityZone": true,
"RegionNames": [
""
],
"InstanceRequirementsWithMetadata": {
"ArchitectureTypes": [
"x86_64_mac"
],
"VirtualizationTypes": [
"hvm"
],
"InstanceRequirements": {
"VCpuCount": {
"Min": 0,
"Max": 0
},
"MemoryMiB": {
"Min": 0,
"Max": 0
},
"CpuManufacturers": [
"amd"
],
"MemoryGiBPerVCpu": {
"Min": 0.0,
"Max": 0.0
},
"ExcludedInstanceTypes": [
""
],
"InstanceGenerations": [
"previous"
],
"SpotMaxPricePercentageOverLowestPrice": 0,
"OnDemandMaxPricePercentageOverLowestPrice": 0,
"BareMetal": "excluded",
"BurstablePerformance": "excluded",
"RequireHibernateSupport": true,
"NetworkInterfaceCount": {
"Min": 0,
"Max": 0
},
"LocalStorage": "included",
"LocalStorageTypes": [
"hdd"
],
"TotalLocalStorageGB": {
"Min": 0.0,
"Max": 0.0
},
"BaselineEbsBandwidthMbps": {
"Min": 0,
"Max": 0
},
"AcceleratorTypes": [
"fpga"
],
"AcceleratorCount": {
"Min": 0,
"Max": 0
},
"AcceleratorManufacturers": [
"amd"
],
"AcceleratorNames": [
"vu9p"
],
"AcceleratorTotalMemoryMiB": {
"Min": 0,
"Max": 0
}
}
},
"DryRun": true,
"MaxResults": 0,
"NextToken": ""
}
```
1. Create a JSON configuration file using the output from the previous step, and configure it as follows:
1. For `TargetCapacity`, enter your desired Spot capacity in terms of the number of instances or vCPUs, or the amount of memory (MiB).
1. For `TargetCapacityUnitType`, enter the unit for the target capacity. If you omit this parameter, it defaults to `units`.
Valid values: `units` (which translates to number of instances) \$1 `vcpu` \$1 `memory-mib`
1. For `SingleAvailabilityZone`, specify `true` for a response that returns a list of scored Availability Zones. A list of scored Availability Zones is useful if you want to launch all of your Spot capacity into a single Availability Zone. If you omit this parameter, it defaults to `false`, and the response returns a list of scored Regions.
1. (Optional) For `RegionNames`, specify the Regions to use as a filter. You must specify the Region code, for example, `us-east-1`.
With a Region filter, the response returns only the Regions that you specify. If you specified `true` for `SingleAvailabilityZone`, the response returns only the Availability Zones in the specified Regions.
1. You can include either `InstanceTypes` or `InstanceRequirements`, but not both in the same configuration.
Specify one of the following in your JSON configuration:
+ To specify a list of instance types, specify the instance types in the `InstanceTypes` parameter. Specify at least three different instance types. If you specify only one or two instance types, Spot placement score returns a low score. For the list of instance types, see [Amazon EC2 Instance Types](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/).
+ To specify the instance attributes so that Amazon EC2 will identify the instance types that match those attributes, specify the attributes that are located in the `InstanceRequirements` structure.
You must provide values for `VCpuCount`, `MemoryMiB`, and `CpuManufacturers`. You can omit the other attributes; when omitted, the default values are used. For a description of each attribute and their default values, see [get-spot-placement-scores](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/get-spot-placement-scores.html).
For example configurations, see [Example configurations](#sps-example-configs).
1. To get the Spot placement score for the requirements that you specified in the JSON file, use the [get-spot-placement-scores](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/get-spot-placement-scores.html) command, and specify the name and path to your JSON file by using the `--cli-input-json` parameter.
```
aws ec2 get-spot-placement-scores \
--region us-east-1 \
--cli-input-json file://file_name.json
```
Example output if `SingleAvailabilityZone` is set to `false` or omitted (if omitted, it defaults to `false`) – a scored list of Regions is returned.
```
"SpotPlacementScores": [
{
"Region": "us-east-1",
"Score": 7
},
{
"Region": "us-west-1",
"Score": 5
},
...
```
Example output if `SingleAvailabilityZone` is set to `true` – a scored list of Availability Zones is returned.
```
"SpotPlacementScores": [
{
"Region": "us-east-1",
"AvailabilityZoneId": "use1-az1",
"Score": 8
},
{
"Region": "us-east-1",
"AvailabilityZoneId": "usw2-az3",
"Score": 6
},
...
```
### Example configurations
When using the AWS CLI, you can use the following example configurations.
**Topics**
+ [Example: Specify instance types and target capacity](#example-config-instance-type-override)
+ [Example: Specify instance types, and target capacity in terms of memory](#example-config-instance-type-memory-unit-override)
+ [Example: Specify attributes for attribute-based instance type selection](#example-config-attribute-based-instance-type-selection)
+ [Example: Specify attributes for attribute-based instance type selection and return a scored list of Availability Zones](#example-config-sps-singleAZ)
#### Example: Specify instance types and target capacity
The following example configuration specifies three different instance types and a target Spot capacity of 500 Spot Instances.
```
{
"InstanceTypes": [
"m5.4xlarge",
"r5.2xlarge",
"m4.4xlarge"
],
"TargetCapacity": 500
}
```
#### Example: Specify instance types, and target capacity in terms of memory
The following example configuration specifies three different instance types and a target Spot capacity of 500,000 MiB of memory, where the number of Spot Instances to launch must provide a total of 500,000 MiB of memory.
```
{
"InstanceTypes": [
"m5.4xlarge",
"r5.2xlarge",
"m4.4xlarge"
],
"TargetCapacity": 500000,
"TargetCapacityUnitType": "memory-mib"
}
```
#### Example: Specify attributes for attribute-based instance type selection
The following example configuration is configured for attribute-based instance type selection, and is followed by a text explanation of the example configuration.
```
{
"TargetCapacity": 5000,
"TargetCapacityUnitType": "vcpu",
"InstanceRequirementsWithMetadata": {
"ArchitectureTypes": ["arm64"],
"VirtualizationTypes": ["hvm"],
"InstanceRequirements": {
"VCpuCount": {
"Min": 1,
"Max": 12
},
"MemoryMiB": {
"Min": 512
}
}
}
}
```
****`InstanceRequirementsWithMetadata`****
To use attribute-based instance type selection, you must include the `InstanceRequirementsWithMetadata` structure in your configuration, and specify the desired attributes for the Spot Instances.
In the preceding example, the following required instance attributes are specified:
+ `ArchitectureTypes` – The architecture type of the instance types must be `arm64`.
+ `VirtualizationTypes` – The virtualization type of the instance types must be `hvm`.
+ `VCpuCount` – The instance types must have a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 12 vCPUs.
+ `MemoryMiB` – The instance types must have a minimum of 512 MiB of memory. By omitting the `Max` parameter, you are indicating that there is no maximum limit.
Note that there are several other optional attributes that you can specify. For the list of attributes, see [get-spot-placement-scores](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/get-spot-placement-scores.html).
**`TargetCapacityUnitType`**
The `TargetCapacityUnitType` parameter specifies the unit for the target capacity. In the example, the target capacity is `5000` and the target capacity unit type is `vcpu`, which together specify a desired target capacity of 5000 vCPUs, where the number of Spot Instances to launch must provide a total of 5000 vCPUs.
#### Example: Specify attributes for attribute-based instance type selection and return a scored list of Availability Zones
The following example configuration is configured for attribute-based instance type selection. By specifying `"SingleAvailabilityZone": true`, the response will return a list of scored Availability Zones.
```
{
"TargetCapacity": 1000,
"TargetCapacityUnitType": "vcpu",
"SingleAvailabilityZone": true,
"InstanceRequirementsWithMetadata": {
"ArchitectureTypes": ["arm64"],
"VirtualizationTypes": ["hvm"],
"InstanceRequirements": {
"VCpuCount": {
"Min": 1,
"Max": 12
},
"MemoryMiB": {
"Min": 512
}
}
}
}
```