Acquisition and maintenance of dedicated, reserved, and variable compute capacity

A system for providing low-latency computational capacity, the system comprising:

• a virtual compute system comprising one or more hardware computing devices executing specific computer-executable instructions and configured to at least:
• maintain a plurality of virtual machine instances on one or more physical computing devices, wherein the plurality of virtual machine instances comprises:
• a first pool comprising virtual machine instances assigned to a first user account before a request associated with the first user account is received by the virtual compute system;
• and
• a second pool comprising virtual machine instances executing one or more program codes thereon;
• receive the request to execute a first program code using compute capacity provided by one of the plurality of virtual machine instances, the request including first user account information and one or more parameters for executing the first program code;
• determine, based on the first user account information, that the first program code is to be executed using compute capacity provided by a virtual machine instance in the first pool;
• determine that the first pool lacks compute capacity sufficient to execute the first program code;
• in response to determining that the first pool lacks compute capacity sufficient to execute the first program code, determine that a policy associated with the first pool allows the virtual compute system to wait for additional compute capacity sufficient to execute the first program code to become available;
• in response to determining that the policy allows the virtual compute system to wait, wait for additional compute capacity sufficient to execute the first program code to become available in the first pool;
• cause a first virtual machine instance in the first pool having compute capacity sufficient to execute the first program code to be added to the second pool;
• and
• cause the first program code to be executed, using the one or more parameters, in a container created on the first virtual machine instance.

A computer-implemented method comprising:

• as implemented by one or more computing devices configured with specific executable instructions,
• maintaining a plurality of virtual machine instances on one or more physical computing devices, wherein the plurality of virtual machine instances comprises:
• a first pool comprising virtual machine instances assigned to a first user account before a code execution request associated with the first user account is received by the virtual compute system;
• and
• a second pool comprising virtual machine instances executing one or more program codes thereon;
• receiving the request to execute a first program code using compute capacity provided by one of the plurality of virtual machine instances, the request including first user account information and one or more parameters for executing the first program code;
• determining, based on the first user account information, that the first program code is to be executed using compute capacity provided by a virtual machine instance in the first pool;
• determining that the first pool lacks compute capacity sufficient to execute the first program code;
• in response to determining that the first pool lacks compute capacity sufficient to execute the first program code, determining that a policy associated with the first pool allows the virtual compute system to wait for additional compute capacity sufficient to execute the first program code to become available;
• in response to determining that the policy allows the virtual compute system to wait, waiting for additional compute capacity sufficient to execute the first program code to become available in the first pool;
• causing a first virtual machine instance in the first pool having compute capacity sufficient to execute the first program code to be added to the second pool;
• and
• causing the first program code to be executed, using the one or more parameters, in a container created on the first virtual machine instance.