CI: stop using spot-instances, they are flaky

[aramprice]

These are not stable enough for testing purposes.

NOTE: this repository uses a "Merge Forward" strategy

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1. Create a PR into the oldest branch (ubuntu-<short_name>)
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4. Create a PR to merge merge-to-<next_short_name> into ubuntu-<next_short_name>
5. Repeat as needed for subsequent branches

[linux-foundation-easycla]

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• ✅ login: aramprice / name: aram price (0bf1a42)

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ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: ASSERTIVE

Plan: Pro

Run ID: ccc1a155-2ef9-4c83-ba25-9cf7136ca7fc

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 2c6bc72 and 0bf1a42.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• ci/pipelines/builder.yml

Walkthrough

This pull request disables GCP preemptible instances in two deployment tasks within the pipeline configuration. The test-stemcells-ipv4 and bats jobs have their GCP_PREEMPTIBLE parameter changed from true to false. This affects how these jobs provision GCP resources during their execution.

Suggested reviewers

• mkocher
• ystros
• neddp

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly describes the main change: disabling spot/preemptible instances in CI due to instability, which aligns with the changeset.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description includes a brief explanation of the change and includes the repository's required merge-forward strategy documentation in full.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch stop-using-spot-instances

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[coderabbitai]

Caution

Some comments are outside the diff and can’t be posted inline due to platform limitations.

⚠️ Outside diff range comments (1)

ci/pipelines/builder.yml (1)

577-594: ⚠️ Potential issue | 🟡 Minor | ⚡ Quick win

VARS_PREEMPTIBLE: true still enables spot instances for BATs test VMs

The prepare-bats task at line 586 still passes VARS_PREEMPTIBLE: true into the BATs configuration. This controls whether the VMs deployed by BOSH during the BAT test run are preemptible — meaning the actual test VMs remain spot instances and are still subject to the same preemption-driven flakiness the PR is addressing. Only the director was switched to on-demand.

🐛 Proposed fix

-          VARS_PREEMPTIBLE: true
+          VARS_PREEMPTIBLE: false

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

In `@ci/pipelines/builder.yml` around lines 577 - 594, The prepare-bats task is
still passing VARS_PREEMPTIBLE: true which makes the BATs-deployed test VMs
preemptible; change the VARS_PREEMPTIBLE value to false in the prepare-bats task
so BATs creates on‑demand (non‑preemptible) VMs during the test run (update the
VARS_PREEMPTIBLE entry in the same prepare-bats block to false to match the
director change).

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

Outside diff comments:
In `@ci/pipelines/builder.yml`:
- Around line 577-594: The prepare-bats task is still passing VARS_PREEMPTIBLE:
true which makes the BATs-deployed test VMs preemptible; change the
VARS_PREEMPTIBLE value to false in the prepare-bats task so BATs creates
on‑demand (non‑preemptible) VMs during the test run (update the VARS_PREEMPTIBLE
entry in the same prepare-bats block to false to match the director change).

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ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: ASSERTIVE

Plan: Pro

Run ID: 45f6892d-d24a-4e67-8b79-51b751b45f27

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 2d3933d and 2c6bc72.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• ci/pipelines/builder.yml

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR aims to improve CI stability by disabling GCP preemptible (spot) instances in the builder pipeline, reducing job flakiness during integration testing.

Changes:

• Set GCP_PREEMPTIBLE: false for the GCP deploy-director task used by IPv4 stemcell tests.
• Set GCP_PREEMPTIBLE: false for the GCP deploy-director task used by BATS stemcell tests.

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