One year free VPS and why and when you should consider it

Trading Systems Expert Advisors and Automated Trading
1

Hi guys and gals,

Yesterday I spring cleaned my VPS set-up. Upgraded some VPSs and installed everything new. It feels fresh and crisp…

Made me think that it might be a good moment to inform you (for the ones that don’ t know about it) that you can choose and run your own vps at aws.amazon.com.

They are the cheapest that I have seen and I worked with them for years now. You can actually run a vps for free for a year (a tiny one), but you will find that out when you look on their site.

Of course you can go as cheap or as expensive as you want. I get a pretty good latency <8 ms in their data center Virginia. Their tiniest vps is enough to run two MT4 instances (but just). When you are not scalping this should be enough for most of you guys. I have larger servers, but you can grow as you go.

Why whould you consider this?

  • when you have a poor or unreliable internet connection and you like to run a script.
  • when you can’t have your own pc turned on all day.
  • when you want to use a IP-address from the US.

Have a look. I may prepare a ‘howto’-thread, but that is too much work atm.

Feel free to ask questions when you need a hand (I am not going to spoon feed you).

2

Thanks for the info! It is still way down the line for me. But it is good to know what the options are.

3

Is that <8ms latency per round turn or just ping?

I found that when I was using a VPS and running MT4 many years back, the ping might be <2ms (was in the UK) but I wrote a script that would time how fast my orders were being processed. Per round turn I was seeing orders being processed in the 200-400ms range, compared to my local computer which was around 800-1600ms.

4

That is the ping to the server. From where I live the ping is >250 ms, so 8 ms ping is a big improvement. Of course this doesn’t include the trade itself. I can’t controle how quick the server of the broker process my trade. I just want to beat the traders with higher latency than mine… :slight_smile:

Was your broker located in the UK as well?

5

Yes, the broker I was with at the time had their servers in the UK. Would be nice to have 2ms latency on a retail account, wouldn’t it?

One day, I’m sure. :slight_smile:

6

Thanks for sharing this! I will sign up as soon as i can. Do you know exaclty how you would set mt4 up on this? Do you use their virtual machine?

7

On an ECN account as well… :slight_smile: I heard somewhere that it is about 1 ms per 50 mile, but that may be outdated (what means it got lower). That is why data centers around New York are very expensive, as banks like to get as close as possible.

8

Just as easy as at home. Download the file and execute it, log in to your account and you are done.

The process to set-up a vps is a bit cumbersome (am sure that there is a youtube clip for that), but when you got it the next ones are easy.

9

Many exchanges are starting to enforce a minimum cable length requirement for servers/datacenters now to help even the playing field a bit. Currently my trading is collocated at Equinix’s NY4, which is good enough for my purposes. But ultimately, choosing the right broker for execution will make or break your strategies.

10

Hey Fellas. Im looking into BeeksFX, which is 1ms, based in NY.

No idea about anything yet, like ram size needed and all that. I just want to run 1 single EA, 1 pair, simple set up. They offer

£25*

PER MONTH
1300 MB RAM | 1 VCPU
25 GB Disk Space
Your selection of MT4 Broker
Managed VPS Service option
cTrader / cAlgo Support
Windows Server 2012 / 2008

Not sure if this is what I need, or how to even set anything up and such, so investigating all this today.

11

If you’re running just 1 instance of an EA, that should be more than enough. Haven’t used BeeksFX myself, but I’m sure they set up just like any other VPS service.