What companies are offering secure/cheap virtual machines for automated trading? I'm considering to automate a tradestation strategy to C2. I'd like something secure and that I could install own software on, probably just tradestation. Mainly it needs to be cheap and fast/reliable... or I can just setup a dedicated box of my own for it.
I offer this in NYC with good connectivity to the equity markets. Currently its only offered to a few traders on a very limited basis but I am spending the weekend building hardware to expand. The group that I offer this for (random non-affiliated 3rd party) needed to expand so I purchased more hardware: http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/2UTwin3.cfm I'm in the process of expanding the business (offering VMs to more traders (or anyone)) but I don't want to go into it too much as I don't want to break any solicitation rules, etc. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have though. A few things to keep in mind: Security, software compatibility, up-time, location and connectivity. See my virus thread (in backup & security) about keeping machines isolated. Software compatibility, up-time and location all depend on your needs. Do you need low-latency? Raw processing power? Why do you want to go virtual vs. a local box? What type of machine are you looking for. Again - without turning this thread into too much of a sales pitch I'm happy to discuss, explain, etc. because this is 100% where the market is going and a way to get an edge up on other remote traders. Happy to also setup a demo session for anyone who wants to try it out. Hope that helps!
Didn't see this, sorry. Ping from where to where? I have space across four (4) difference colo facilities so it depends on where you get your data from and where you execute. If you have a public IP that I can ping I'm happy to post some numbers.
to clarify, if i have a point-to-point or cross-connect then we are talking less than 5ms on the p2p and cross connects are <1ms max. Usually the p2p's are <1ms and cross connects are in the 200-500nano range. Those numbers are pretty variable though because I can't control the other end of the line in most cases. If you need to hit the internet add 10-15ms to the times above. Most of the time you'll be able to round trip in 5-20ms. I can get to most retail brokers (IB, Etrade, Scottrade, lightspeed, sogo, etc) faster from the standalone racks in my office or apartment than I can from some of the colo locations. It depends on connectivity and routing more than location. Again happy to setup a few test boxes if people are seriously interested and I'm happy to post ping results.
If you do not need a machine up 24/7 then you might consider Amazon EC2. Meaning you would start the machine, your connections, software, etc. at a set time then shut them down at a set time. It might require some "extra code" from AutoHotKey or such, but might be worth it. I've only used them for their Spot Requests VPS services which are the cheapest and only for testing, nothing critical.
I am with AutomatedVPS located in Secaucus and have 5ms ping to trade in NY. Also I had one with Interserver for a couple months, they seemed good too. Amazon EC2 is in VA and was 30ms. I have a post about it here http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=221367&perpage=6&pagenumber=1 I really like having a solid machine without having to manage colocated hardware, and I found out that for me, the extra 5ms doesn't matter.
Amazon is pretty slow. I have a few different locations - some are just regular run-of-the-mill data centers where I'd say to someone in California that "its better than where you are now but maybe not worth it" and others have cross connect direct to the data and to the execution. It all depends. I'm not a pioneer here, there certainly is a mature market for VM's but there isn't much of a market for a VM with 0-5ms latency to your data and execution. The other piece of my business is just selling/renting garbage desktops. Just any old dual/quad CPU with 2-4gb of RAM so you can watch YouTube and check Facebook without draining system resources on your local machine. Download stuff fast - pull it to your machine later. Travel and not worry about leaving your home or office PC on. Be a little more confident about what you do to your machine because snapshots are taken in short intervals so if you blow it up you really have zero to lose. There are two sides and very few are in the low-latency space. The other thing is that the amazon stuff is a pain. You have to turn it on & off as you get billed hourly or by the minute/15minutes. Everything I do is based on 24/7 so you can leave your stuff on and not worry. Enough with the sales pitches - I'm happy to answer questions about this stuff. People seem generally scared about the technology but things are getting better and better by the day.
You guys do know that ISP's separate ICMP traffic using COS/QOS and give it a low priority? I wouldn't count on it for much more than a very rough estimate.