Virtual Private Server?

[lbranjord]

Has anyone gone to using a Virtual Private Server for hosting their MT4 and EA? I'm looking into these and apparently for $30-200 a month, they keep constant connection and the PC is always on. It's supposed to be secure, but I have doubts there.

A little nervous about this but it seems like the only affordable option at the moment. Who's tried it?

 

[wackypete2]

I've never used a VPS so I can't answer your question directly, but may I ask why you feel the need? The way I see it a VPS is useful or worth the price if you need to have a completely unattended ea for several months or more or if there is some unavoidable reason you can't keep your PC on 24 hours a day.

If you host your ea on your PC (as is usual) and you check it every day then what's the worst that can happen? Just my opinion here, but a good ea should be able to handle a few hours offline if your PC inadvertantly shutdown.

Another thought..there are some forex brokers who will allow you free use of a VPS if you keep some sort of balance in the account. Might be worth looking into.

Peter

 

[lbranjord]

You're right, a good ea should be able to. but what I have is a scalping EA which will run on 15mn and it could suffer from an internet outage of a few hours or more, like while I sleep or am at work. It's not that I mind if it shuts down, but if it is not on, trades will not exit.

Again, this is just my current system and I'm thinking far ahead here. I change my mind and code daily so, just speculating.

If the broker offered this, that would be pretty cool. I found one VPS for 30 a month USD, but I have no faith in the integrity of their systems at that price.

 

[wackypete2]

I change my mind and code daily

LOL. I hear ya there.

It's not that I mind if it shuts down, but if it is not on, trades will not exit.

OK, I understand that. You can use what I call a catastrophic stop loss.Try setting a hard stop loss far away enough so that it won't get hit during normal operation of your ea. In other words your ea would have stopped out normally before the cat stop loss gets hit. The cat stop loss is exactly that, in case something goes horribly wrong you will still have stops in place to protect your account.

I'm interested in how well your scalping ea performs live! Let me know.


Peter

 

[lbranjord]

If I kick some a$$ I'll send you the code since you're a good fella, It's mostly someone else's code anyway, I just made my changes to make it safe. This guy was living by the sword, but his underlying method was pretty good.

So far I only built one quasi-profitable one from scratch. The rest were junk, but gave me valuable information about certain methods.

 

[LazyManForex]

I have my own servers but I recently looked into vps's to steal some CPU cycles.

First, find the IP of the trade server of your broker.

Next call the vps service and ask them to ping your datacenter from INSIDE the vps network. Not the sales office.

You should be way under 50 ms. Way under.

Next don't use the default setup which has way to little RAM, of you have a complex EA, consider at least 768 RAM.

But its way cheaper to do your own servers. You can get amazing servers for under $2500 for a 1U. Loaded.

Then you can host in ny nj which is close to all the banks for about $100 per month.

I have 6 trade servers in a quarter rack in ny for about $500 per month pinging less than 10ms.

Then on the cheap (for comparison) I have 20 analysis and database servers in a rack for $400 per month in Miami. The ping sucks, but they aren't trading, and its cheap.

Consider a decent vps will cost you $50/month configured correctly, you can get a lot of firepower way cheaper with your own servers.

Consider there are 30-40 other guys on your vps server.

Also lately I've been thinking of picking up a blade server rack and get one off eBay for under $10k. That's 10 serious servers for less than 1k each. Then you can host them for $300-$400 per month.

-The laziest man at LazyManForex-

 

[Adamus]

Hi LazyMan,

sounds like you're seriously not lazy! Can you put me straight on what you mean by "[buying a rack and] hosting servers for $300 - $400 per month"?

So who is doing the hosting? A third party company who you give the machines to? They plug them in and turn them on and then they guarantee the connection and the power supply? What happens if the hardware needs maintenance or replacement?

Thanks

 

[LazyManForex]

Yes, hosting is I buy the servers and ship them to a 3rd party to put them in a rack. They have redundant internet and power.

Servers are measured in 1Us for their height. Theoretically 40 U's can fit in a rack.

The Miami datacenter charges me for a 1/2 rack, so I put 20 1U servers there.

The new jersey datacenter is double the price, but closer to the bank servers.

if you just want to start with 1 server, you can get it colocated anywhere for $100 per month.

So for that $100 per month, you have the computing power of 40 vps's (not including the cost of the server).

Go to eBay and type in "1U server" and "blade server" to see.

sounds like a lot of cash to lay out for a server, but if this is your profession, it's a cheap investment in the long term.

In terms of repair, most of mine are under a dell on site service contract. But some are not. For those I pay the datacenter to try and fix the problem, otherwise I have them shipped back to me. In the U.S. figure $100 each way for UPS shipping.

they don't usually have problems, but I have had it happen several times, but remember I have LOTS of servers so the odds are higher for me.

On the other hand a vps is a cheap way to get started with a minimal cash outlay. But it will limit you in the end.

I'm happy to answer any specific questions you might have, I've done this for a long long time.

-The laziest man at LazyManForex-

 

[LazyManForex]

A vps/offsite "ea" is a good long term investment for your trading. You never have to worry about power or internet.

Internet goes down a lot more than you think at home. It's only momentary, but for a trader that can be big.

Download something called serversalive for free, set it for your brokers trade server, turn on logging. After a week you will be surprised.

Plus *if* you are an ea trader, you need to be thinking of heading towards lots of EA's. Like 10+, 20 is better. Then manage your EA's like employees (or lowly prop traders living in your home). They can be fired, suspended, retired or rehired at will based on their performance.

that many smelly guys sleeping in your livingroom is bound to get old fast. Hence a vps.

Try multiple EA's on demo, you might be surprised. Dont stress too much if they are good or bad. Throw them on demo and see what you can see.

-The laziest man at LazyManForex-

 

[episteme]

I have no problems with the low end VPS servers I use at £17 a month. I run 3 x Metatrader on each. You really don't need anymore for MT$ EA's.

 

[lbranjord]

Wow, very helpful advice on this thread. Thanks Lazy and Episteme.

I have multiple EAs right now, about 7 that I would use. The problem I'm encountering is trading other currencies. Should I care about this? Or should I just trade the sh$$ out of one pair? EUR/USD is always the best for my EAs or GBPUSD sometimes.

I have reverse based and Trend based systems. All of them firing off at different times, but usually on EUR/USD or GBP/USD or USD/CAD.

Do you use many currencies Lazy? Or many systems on a few currencies? Advice appreciated Thanks

 

[episteme]

I run 3 x MT4 instances with 8 pairs in each MT4 app. MT4 really doesn't use many resources - I think I have only 512 memory and 15GB hard disk on the VPS. I have got unlimited network traffic so not sure how little you could get away with - but using MT4 over a pay for usage usb stick in the past for a few days makes me think it doesn't use a lot of bandwidth either.

I use rapidhost.co.uk and have had only 1 problem with them in a year (network down for 6 hours or so).

 

[lbranjord]

I run 3 x MT4 instances with 8 pairs in each MT4 app. MT4 really doesn't use many resources - I think I have only 512 memory and 15GB hard disk on the VPS. I have got unlimited network traffic so not sure how little you could get away with - but using MT4 over a pay for usage usb stick in the past for a few days makes me think it doesn't use a lot of bandwidth either.

I use rapidhost.co.uk and have had only 1 problem with them in a year (network down for 6 hours or so).

Ok, I'll have to develop toward the other pairs now so I have more exposure. I'll probably start with one instance and 4-6 pairs. More development to do but even for testing purposes a VPS will be useful.

It seems since I always develop toward eurusd and gbpusd I've found all their quirks and know how to turn any signal into a profitable one with Money management, but on other pairs I am clueless. It will probably take longer for those because there are efforts to develop towards them, hence less ideas to weasle off of other EAs.

 

[nithra]

Hi

A virtual private server (VPS, also referred to as Virtual Dedicated Server or VDS) is a method of splitting (Partitioning) a physical server into multiple servers. Each virtual server can run its own full-fledged operating system, and each server can be independently rebooted.

The practice of partitioning a single server so that it appears as multiple servers has long been common practice in mainframe computers, but has seen a resurgence lately with the development of virtualization software and technologies for other architectures.

A VPS is a good bridge between a shared web hosting plan and a fully dedicated server, giving independence from other customers on shared servers, but at a cheaper cost than a physical dedicated server. However compared to a dedicated server,a VPS has limited processor time, RAM, and disk space.

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[nithra]

Hi

Virtual private server (VPS) is a marketing term used by Internet hosting services to refer to a virtual machine for use exclusively by an individual customer of the service. The term is used to emphasize that the virtual machine, although running in software on the same physical computer as other customers' virtual machines, is functionally equivalent to a separate physical computer, is dedicated to the individual customer's needs, has the privacy of a separate physical computer, and can be configured to run as a server computer (i.e. to run server software)

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