Case Study: Cutting Cloud Costs 30% with Spot Fleets and Query Optimization for Large Model Workloads

Case Study: Cutting Cloud Costs 30% with Spot Fleets and Query Optimization for Large Model Workloads

Hook: Cloud bills can spiral. This case study walks a practical program that reduced costs by ~30% for a production model pipeline without harming latency SLAs.

Background

A mid-size SaaS provider was running a mixed batch/real-time stack with increasing demand for inference. They adopted a three-pronged approach: opportunistic spot compute, smarter query routing, and predictive caching.

Architecture Changes

• Spot-capable worker pools: Non-critical batch workloads were reallocated to spot fleets with graceful preemption handlers.
• Adaptive routing: Time-sensitive queries routed to reserved capacity; best-effort jobs used spot or async paths.
• Cache-first responses: Frequently requested outputs were cached at the edge to reduce repeat inference costs.

These tactics mirror tactics used in other successful migrations — a concrete company-level example of implementing spot fleets and query optimization is documented in the Bengal cloud case study: Bengal SaaS Cost-Cut Case Study.

Implementation Details

Key technical moves we adopted:

1. Abstracted instance pools into a placement layer that could dynamically reassign work.
2. Introduced a prediction layer that estimated the cost-to-serve per query.
3. Built a cache invalidation policy that balanced freshness with compute savings.

Tooling and Integrations

We relied on serverless and database cost governance to track spend and identify anomalies; the broader playbook on serverless databases was useful in shaping guardrails: Serverless Databases and Cost Governance.

We also borrowed design approaches from monolith-to-microservice migration guides to minimize blast radius during the rollout: From Monolith to Microservices.

Outcomes

• Overall cloud spend reduction: ~30% within 3 months of rollout.
• No measurable increase in p95 latency for prioritized SLAs.
• Improved predictability of monthly billing.

Lessons Learned

• Start with measurement: know which queries drive costs.
• Be conservative with preemption handling; test failure modes thoroughly.
• Evangelize cost governance across product and engineering teams to avoid shadow usage.

"Cost reductions came from smarter routing and a willingness to treat compute as a managed product with an SLO."

Tags: cloud-costs, spot-fleets, case-study, model-ops