Some Basic questions on VPS

Hi Folks, I was wondering, for those of you who use a VPS for trading, if you can help enlighten me with some questions I have. This will be my first time using a VPS and I want to trade about 2 to 3 MT4 platforms.

  1. I am in Canada, would it be wise to use a VPS located in North America for latency purposes?

  2. Which VPS would you recommend? CNS keeps coming up for me, however they are a bit more expensive. Ultimately, price is not so much a factor than problem free and smooth operations.

  3. If I am running 2 to 3 MT4 platforms, does that mean I have to buy one service/slice/portion of the computer (I don’t know what the term is) per platform? Or can I just choose a faster performing service and run all my MT4s off it concurrently? I will be using EAs on two MT4 platforms.

  4. How much memory do I need? How many cores do I need? How much RAM do I need? What is the minimum monthly bandwidth do I need?

  5. Some VPN firms say that they have MT4 preinstalled. What does that mean? I currently use FXCM and plan to use their services throughout. Which means I will have to download their MT4 platform anyways. My understanding is that each broker has their own MT4 platform linked to their own servers…this is the part that confuses me. What is the purpose of preinstalled MT4 platforms? How can they be used if they are not linked to my broker?

Those are my questions for now. Thanks for taking the time. Cheers!

I contacted CNS directly and spoke with a rep on live chat…the answers are:

  1. The data centre where your MT4 terminal is located should be as close to the exchange as possible…in this case, I am in North America and the data centre of choice is in NY.

  2. CNS and BEEKS have very good reviews.

  3. If I am running two to three terminals, then buy the package that will be able to run all three terminals smoothly…meaning a current windows platform 2008 or 2012 (Windows 7 or 8).

  4. Running two to three platform requires about 1500MB of RAM, Dual core processor and 25GBs is more than enough. Most retail traders don’t need more than 1GB Bandwidth usage per month.

  5. Essentially, install my own MT4 platform from my broker on to the virtual machine.

Hope it helps everyone as it did me.

Cheers.

1 Like

Hi Godspeed,

The MT4 platform on your VPS would need to link to the servers of your broker. It’s possible that the VPS providers you mentioned have copies of the MT4 platform pre-loaded for the most popular brokers.

Since you trade with FXCM, you will be interested to know that we offer two co-located VPS options. If your account balance is at least $5000, then you can get these services for free: Free MT4 VPS Hosting - FXCM

That’s excellent! Thanks for letting me know Jason.

Never used VPS, but the topic sounds prettey interesting. My broker also has free VPS, I will look more into it and check out the advantages and how it can serve me better.