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I agree with @NetTecture, but the oversold ratio could be more than 1.25 I think. On my servers, the CPU load is below 5% most of the time, but I'm maybe just lucky to have very quiet users .
Is it worth $30 extra a month to have to A) Select a VPS service that doesn't habitually "oversell" it's servers, B) Monitor and ensure that it stays that way and C) Run the risk that if for WHATEVER reason, they choose to oversell your server, that you face the adverse effects.
I say no. One single incident could cost WAY more than $30 extra a month to have your own, personal, dedicated piece of hardware.
Regardless of oversell, if some other client on the same piece of hardware as you, happens to run ANYTHING unstable and cause the computer to sieze, stall, restart, shutdown.....etc.....you'll be looking back at that $30 you saved crying the blues, wishing you'd have been safe rather than sorry.
For what it's worth.
I trade CL. That may play a significant role in my decision. If I were trading inter-day or intermediate to long term on less volitile instruments, I would say...the risk is much less.
The entire reason I choose to run on someone else's machine is for reliability and risk management. I'd be very remiss to go through all that trouble and then still have an issue just because I was trying to squeeze $30/month savings out of my trading expenses.
That is opartialy because you throw a modern CPU at very little memory My small servers - build with "end user" hardware (Micro atx boards) have twice your memory (6gb) my "real" one rruns 64gb.
Especially when doing backtests etc. it is important to have proper CPU prioritization up (i.e. interactive systems get priority).
I'm sure someone has already chimed in about this, but just in case they did not:
Your total bandwidth does not matter. It is the latency to the order/execution servers that matters. An actual buy or sell order is probably no more than 5kb of actual data. However, what matters is HOW FAST that 5kb reaches its destination.
Just some food for thought. If you are serious about colocation then you'll need to consider:
1. Latency from price server
2. Latency to order server
3. Signal processing time (usually measured in microseconds)
I am reporting my search of trading servers since starting this thread a few months ago.
I have tried VPS. As many have mentioned, VPS seems cheaper but most likely overloaded. Dedicated server seems to cost a lot more. However, I have found that a third (and newer) category, cloud servers, offer a better price/performance ratio.
What I am looking for as a trading server:
- low down time: especially critical to 24-hour unattended trading
- Little or no maintenance. If there is any maintenance shutdown, better in a regular time of day.
I have tried Rackspace Clouds and Amazon EC2. Both are reliable. I settled with Amazon EC2 because of its reputation, longer time in the market, and a favorable pricing structure. Unlike physical servers (VPS or dedicated), cloud servers do not have maintenance shutdowns, they can be left running for weeks, and I remember Amazon enjoys a high reputation of having very low down time, which means the connection to the internet is up for more than 99.5% of the time. I am not an IT expert, so I can be wrong on this, but I have had my strategies running on EC2 since the beginning of this year and have had no issues with the server. Most problems are caused by broker server resets. My strategies make about five trades a day on average, and I do not use intra-bar order processing.
As some mentioned about the resource overloading, EC2 guarantees how much CPU power you get (in their unit of measurement, 1 means a Pentium CPU running at 1.2GHz or something like that) and it is scalable. As for the memory and hard disk access speed, I have not done any benchmark tests yet, but my feel is that they are reasonably fast and consistent.
I do not think remote server is a good choice for discretionary trading because keeping live charts on your local PC requires a lot of bandwidth (for the graphics) between you and the server, and that adds to the delay which can be fatal if you are trying to scalp the market. However, for low- to medium-frequency traders, bandwidth is usually not a problem, and trading on remote servers eliminates a lot of risk factors from trading, such as power and network interruptions.
I am a discretionary trader. I currently trade on a local computer with Cable internet connection. I trade intraday with one chart , one instrument in one time frame with NinjaTrader/Zenfire. I don't scalp. I am usually in a trade from a few minutes up to an hour.
During the day I get occasional intermitten "connection lost" even though my internet connection is still working. I am looking for a more secure method for transmitting orders.
Is it feasible to use a remote server to do this?
Would I gain anything or would I just be adding another layer to the current situation?
Regards,
TMFT
I'm just a simple man trading a simple plan.
My daddy always said, "Every day above ground is a good day!"
I had the same problem TMFT, where if I lost connection for more than 10 seconds or so, it would dump all my data for simming (so I had to CONSTANTLY save). If I lost connection for more than 30 seconds or so, it would totally log me out of my platform.
Even for a discretionary guy, with the trade desk on speed dial, it would be pretty harrowing to fly blind in the middle of a trade position until you log back in to see what's what...even if it's a couple of minutes. Of course you can always leave your stops on the trade server, but still.
I checked out cloud, but it seemed like every company I called, said "we don't really do that" when I described to them what I wanted....a simple machine connected to the internet with a reliable power/connection that I could access remotely.
If someone finds a cloud server that runs flawlessly for less than $70/month, I'm all ears.
@ThatManFromTexas and @RM99, don't you want to try one of my VPS ?
I will have free slots next week, testing 1 or 2 weeks won't cost you anything, and if you use later another commercial solution, you'll have something to compare with.
I will send you the details, but most of them are already in this thread (but it's in Elite, so you can't read it).
The physical servers are in Chicago, few milliseconds from the CME. The VPS are Windows 2008 R2 (so you use Remote Desktop), 2 Xeons core, 1GB, 50GB (or more if needed, someone asks me for 100GB), 100mb/s, and it's cheap (below your $70).
All the VPS users are nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) members, and seems happy (all the first users have renewed their 3 months subscription, one of them use 2 VPS, and the first two physical servers are full, I'm configuring a third one now).
edit: and now I have to auto-ban myself for self-advertising !!!
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