Have you done anything further with this? It seems like every time I turn around Amazon comes up with something new for EC2
I haven't yet because I am too busy. If I try to learn anything else my head might explode ala scanners.
I evaluated using it. I don't think it's a bad idea for a development platform but you might want to get a 1U and colocate if you get in any way serious. Even serious stuff you could probably do fine on a 'Large' instance. I have used it as a dev box to basically remote desktop into and run stuff/collect data/etc while I'm busy on my other computers. Ping times were about 33ms to NYC from the northern virginia locale (i forget which letter it is). For $.125/hour how can you go wrong testing it out? One suggestion: use Elasticfox, it makes new user experience a lot easier.
I personally use a co-location facility in my home-town. They have multiple SONET rings with OC-3, OC-12 and OC-48 connectivity. They also have redundant gigantic UPS backups and redundant diesel generators for power outages. Last year, I had one 2 second internet outage (and that was it). Cost is $150 per month and I get to rack my own server. I have key-card access for entry into the facility as well. Someone is there from 6:00AM until midnight and if you need access after hours, they require a 15 minute notification. This sure as hell beats running my ATS behind the futon in my basement (which I use to do a couple years ago)...... Jason
First are you actually making money today? I ask this in all honesty because coming from a software developer IT background I/we have a habit of doing all this planning for nothing... If you are making money then the cost of running the most appropriate IT is not going to matter diddly squat since you are making money. Thus if it costs 300 USD per or 10,000 USD per year it will not matter. Trust me on this! When you spend 10,000 per year you can get a lot of redundancy automatically built in. Now if you are not making money and planning on the cheap I say you are pushing a string. When the power went out in your town for two hours was it during a storm? Well, one can plan for that and avoid trading. The way I handle things is very simple. I have a DSL connection at home, and I have a cell Internet plan. Thus if things go down by us I get my laptop, cell phone and shut my positions down. If you say, but hey what if the cell towers don't work? Drive an hour to where the cell towers do work. If you say, but there is a storm, then I reply watch the weather and avoid trading during storms. Its actually pretty easy... Then when you make lots and lots of money you can think about wasting it on redundancies. Because what you will be doing is wasting money. Think about it as follows. Power goes down, and the back up keeps trading. Are you really willing to let the system keep trading without you being able to do anything? That would scare the bezeers out of me, and I write software for a living that trades on the market. Trying to keep a system running so that your trading system does not have to reboot is also asking for trouble. What if the systems get out of sync? What if the market disconnects and goes down? I see it everyday I get warnings that exchange X cannot trade, and then an hour later the exchange is up and running again. As much as people would like "money printing presses" while they go fishing, that is not a solution. Because if it was that easy we would all be doing it!
You're shitting me right? You see this everyday? Which exchanges are you trading on? The electronic version of Cheggers' SwapShop? If exchanges went down with that kind of regularity they'd soon see all their listings disappear elsewhere.
Try BATS, PHLX, CBOE, etc... I use IB and I get these messages all the time. What happens is that exchanges say, "You can't trade product X, from A to J" You wait, and then you trade again. Sometimes even your broker can't trade. These outages are usually a few minutes, sometimes a half hour. The reality is that the entire chain is unreliable. It works for the most part, but to create an infrastructure premised on the fact that it never goes down, and cannot reconcile is asking for trouble. Overall if your infrastructure recognizes these problems then you do ok and it is no big deal. It is a big deal if your infrastructure cannot cope with these issues.
This is very different to what you originally said. Products going offline for a few minutes every so often is not the same as exchanges going offline for up to an hour every day. And if your broker can still trade the product then trading has obviously not been suspended and the problem lies with you, not the product or exchange. On which CBOE products are you seeing this behaviour exhibited?
I agree with Christian's statement. I also use Interactive Brokers and I've certainly seen this behavior over and over again throughout the last 10 years of trading with them. I'd say that it's about 2 or 3 times per week that we get a red warning flashing in our software that says "X exchange is experiencing problems with blah blah blah". Usually, it's as Christian already explained where it's a certain number of symbols that cannot be traded on some exchange or ECN (like A through J). 95% of the time, it doesn't affect me in the slightest. Jason
Thanks. I really appreciate the advice. 33!! ms from NYC to Virginia? Sounds awful. Is that RT or one way? What do you think of Google App Engine?