I’m using the Brenda console script to run the Brenda for Blender AWS cloud rendering. I’ve successfully run tests with the Brenda console script in the past. I stopped using it several months ago but now am ready to start running it again, this time with a real project.
Unfortunately, I’m having difficulty acquiring a reasonably-priced EC2 spot instance because the Brenda console, Brenda itself, or AWS is always picking an expensive availability zone that I don’t want. As a result, I can never get my render started.
I’m in US-East (Virginia). When I check prices on the Brenda console, I get something that looks like this:
Spot price data for instance c1.xlarge
us-east-1a 2017-07-22T09:28:44.000Z $0.106
us-east-1b 2017-07-22T10:14:18.000Z $0.106
us-east-1c 2017-07-22T13:00:14.000Z $0.1075
us-east-1d 2017-07-22T09:28:44.000Z $5.2
us-east-1e 2017-07-22T09:28:44.000Z $0.1066
Spot price data for instance c3.large
us-east-1a 2017-07-22T12:28:47.000Z $0.0156
us-east-1b 2017-07-22T12:28:47.000Z $0.0158
us-east-1c 2017-07-22T12:28:47.000Z $0.0159
us-east-1d 2017-07-22T12:28:47.000Z $1.05
us-east-1e 2017-07-22T13:31:02.000Z $0.016
us-east-1f 2017-07-22T12:28:47.000Z $1.05
Spot price data for instance c3.xlarge
us-east-1a 2017-07-22T09:00:40.000Z $0.0428
us-east-1b 2017-07-22T13:04:01.000Z $0.0426
us-east-1c 2017-07-22T12:16:19.000Z $0.0427
us-east-1d 2017-07-22T07:12:25.000Z $2.1
us-east-1e 2017-07-22T11:42:37.000Z $0.0436
us-east-1f 2017-07-22T07:12:25.000Z $2.1
Spot price data for instance c3.2xlarge
us-east-1a 2017-07-22T13:39:42.000Z $0.1049
us-east-1b 2017-07-22T13:41:00.000Z $0.1047
us-east-1c 2017-07-22T13:20:00.000Z $0.1047
us-east-1e 2017-07-22T13:41:16.000Z $0.1092
Enter any key to return
I’ll pick one instance of c3.large, for, say, $0.10 or $0.20, which – based on the prices under c3.large, you’d think it would start up an instance. Instead, in the AWS console I get the status of “capacity-not-available” and there it sits forever because, according to the console, the job is scheduled to run on us-east-1d – the most expensive availability zone ($1.05) for an instance.
Even if I choose a different instance type, like c3.xlarge, it still insists on running on us-east-1d. I want to run on any availability zone other than us-east-1d but can’t figure out how to change it. I can’t seem to find a way to change my default availability zone. Any ideas?