Virtual machine advice please

[leizhenhua]

Hi fellow traders,

I've read a few posts RE VPS for NT. With the speed of technology advance, I thought it would not be totally worthless to start a new thread about it.

I just started running an automated trader at home office a month ago and it runs pretty well by the look of it. It mainly day trades FDAX through Zaner. For my particular system, I don't really need super super fast connection and super powerful, because I only have one strategy. But lost of internet due to power black out or hardware failure could be potentially disastrous. Hence I'm thinking of this fancy VPS or whatever it is called the virtual machine that I can run my auto trader on.

My questions:

- Is it really worth it to have a VPS over a home setup? I am living in a capital city in Australia, infrastructure wise, not the top of the world, but reasonably well. I'm not a tech professional but I can handle most day to day computer problems.

- If at least it's worth to try it, what options do we have? As I said I don't really need super powerful super fast connection, but stability/reliability is the top concern. What system my fellow traders are using, if you care to share with us?

Thank you.

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

Welcome to our forums here leizhenhua.

NinjaTrader is pleased to partner with Speedy Trading Servers to deliver reliable hosting solutions for our automated and semi-automated trading clients.

Speedy Trading Servers offers Windows based Virtual Private Servers (VPS) or Dedicated Servers for traders located near NinjaTrader's data providers and order routing technology partners. Some key benefits of these hosting solutions include:

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The VPS solutions utilize a Windows Server 2008 r2 Operating System and dedicated hardware resources with options meeting the most demanding trader's requirements. Connect to your VPS or Dedicated Server using Microsoft's fast and secure Remote Desktop Connection from your PC or Mac. Additional connection options are available for mobile devices (Android, iOS).

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[BernWillChris]

Is that $60 per month for the lowest service package? You can host unlimited amount of websites for like $5 per month the last time I check. I agree that your websites will be very slow, however...lol. Do you know of any other services that are more economical for me?

Thanks

[sledge]

Is that $60 per month for the lowest service package? You can host unlimited amount of websites for like $5 per month the last time I check. I agree that your websites will be very slow, however...lol. Do you know of any other services that are more economical for me?

Thanks

A VPS and website are completely different things.

It looks like $60 is their cheapest.

http://www.speedytradingservers.com/prices

You could play around with Amazon cloud services, but I wouldn't expect any support or howto for NinjaTrader.

[BernWillChris]

I spoke way too fast before doing research. I was aware that VPS is a higher level from basic web hosting with allocated resources for NinjaTrader. I just started doing research since I'm very interested in doing automatic trading and don't really know the market price. What I might do at the early stages is just buy a cheap computer specifically for Ninjatrader and just keep it running at all times. I don't know how screensavers would affect NinjaTrader. That will show up in my electric bill, but watts by the dollar are crazy cheap, especially since power companies are monopolies. I'm assuming that government intervention prevents them from going too high. Thanks for the reply.

[sledge]

I spoke way too fast before doing research. I was aware that VPS is a higher level from basic web hosting with allocated resources for NinjaTrader. I just started doing research since I'm very interested in doing automatic trading and don't really know the market price. What I might do at the early stages is just buy a cheap computer specifically for Ninjatrader and just keep it running at all times. I don't know how screensavers would affect NinjaTrader. That will show up in my electric bill, but watts by the dollar are crazy cheap, especially since power companies are monopolies. I'm assuming that government intervention prevents them from going too high. Thanks for the reply.

Where are you located if you don't mind me asking? How is your internet connection and speed? If lousy - be it cable modem provider always drops out, unreliable, or possibly living overseas and experiencing delays, I would definitely recommend a VPS.

I have a laptop dedicated specifically to NT (Win7 pro)... it also runs ToS (ThinkorSwim), and I use firefox to go to 1 website. Nothing else is done on this laptop except maybe a market replay test in NT on the weekend.

You of course can disable the screen savers.
I have my laptop screen simply turn off after 3 minutes under Windows power settings - because I'm usually not here.

Router and modem are on a UPS device in case of power issues locally...

I haven't looked to see how many watts it consumes though. It stays on 24x7.

[koganam]

I spoke way too fast before doing research. I was aware that VPS is a higher level from basic web hosting with allocated resources for NinjaTrader. I just started doing research since I'm very interested in doing automatic trading and don't really know the market price. What I might do at the early stages is just buy a cheap computer specifically for Ninjatrader and just keep it running at all times. I don't know how screensavers would affect NinjaTrader. That will show up in my electric bill, but watts by the dollar are crazy cheap, especially since power companies are monopolies. I'm assuming that government intervention prevents them from going too high. Thanks for the reply.

My take on the matter, from a post 18 months ago, to the day.

ref: http://ninjatrader.com/support/forum...49&postcount=2

[BernWillChris]

I live in Buckeye state (Ohio) and my internet connection has been fast enough for me to stream YouTube videos with no problem. As far as downloading large files, that has yet to be seen.

It is wiser for me to probably test things out on a VPS for reliability and if I don't like it, I can cancel it. I believe in automated trading because I can leave out my emotions and I don't have to worry about mistakes, since the computer would be executing my trades. I have a scalping strategy that looks promising when I back-test it manually, but it is nearly impossible to test it automatically with NJ because no intrabar trade execution and the spreads are way off. You need your spreads to be around a pip if you going to scalp. Man, I wish I can use the overseas brokers. I'm clueless how those small brokers can offer such small spreads. Liquidity providers have to charge them too and since they are small, it seems that they wouldn't get a discount.

It also will probably be even wiser to test my strategy by writing it in MQL4 to take advantage of the intrabar fills and picking the spread. MQL4 is a pain since they don't believe in overloaded functions.

[BernWillChris]

I like that post. You're absolutely right about automatic trading not being a set and forget it deal. You have to pay attention to the news and run the optimizer every few months to try to make sure that it will work in current market conditions. I know JustHost has a VPS and I used them in the past. I might look deeper into it to make sure that it doesn't violate any of the things that I felt were important that you highlighted. The smallest package is like $15 I believe.

Thanks.