1. At a computer system including one or more processors and system memory, the computer system interoperating with one or more other computer systems in a distributed system, a method for resuming execution of a cluster from saved cluster data, the method comprising: an act of deploying a cluster of compute resources within the distributed system, the deployed cluster for executing a job; an act of executing a portion of the job on the deployed cluster, execution of the portion of the job utilizing cluster data corresponding to the job; an act of taking down the deployed cluster prior to completing execution of the job, taking down the deployed cluster leaving a remaining portion of the job uncompleted; an act of persisting the cluster data corresponding to the job in an external database in response to taking down the deployed cluster, the external database separate from the deployed cluster; an act of re-deploying the cluster of compute resources within the distributed system subsequent to taking down the deployed cluster; an act of attaching the re-deployed cluster to the persisted cluster data in the external database; and an act of resuming execution of the job on the re-deployed cluster to complete the remaining portion of the job, completion of the remaining portion of the job utilizing the persisted cluster data.