As soon as I see the word "unattended"... I know we are in Fantasy Land. Also, anyone running true low latency systems... Would have 100-200K/year engineers on staff... And an infrastructure provider like Thomson Reuters... As opposed to asking questions on ET... (Though there are 2-3 very smart people here). Algo Systems are not a hobby... And cannot be run on a shoestring... And, in my experience... Require just as much attention and skill as manual trading... Much like being a world class gamer. I actually feel sorry for traders starting out today... It was a LOT easier 10 or 15 years ago... 1/8 spreads and regulations still mattered.
DeeDeeTwo, You have the habit of responding to threads by insulting people for being in fantasy land or for being amateurs,; yet you provide no good counsel or assistance. If you can't provide good counsel or assistance, I suggest you maintain your silence. Thank you
You are correct CPTrader ,DeeDeeTwo is the one that's an amateurs or maybe not a trader at all. I've co-located using unattended low latency systems in Chicago for the last two years.
Define "true low latency". Any discussion regarding latency is pointless without numbers. For some 10ms is low enough as to be negligible, whilst for others it is an eternity. I know of a hedge fund that runs with just 3 technical support staff monitoring their algos 24/5 on 3 shifts and they sure as hell ain't on 100-200K/year. You haven't done much boutique work have you. Sounds like you come from an big institutional background. Agree. Disagree. With sensible specifications the cost can be managed. More so. But the rewards are so much greater when you can trade multiple instruments simultaneously.
Amazon EC2 is worth a look. See my post from 6/12/09 for additional comments: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=113107&perpage=6&highlight=ec2&pagenumber=4 . You can change your machine size within minutes, instantiate another instance at a different data center if needed, and the costs are reasonable.
I find them too expensive for something running 24/7 - they excel price wise for small peak loads. Like accoutngi aater market close or something like that where you start up a number of VM for an hour or so. All the other items are mostly non-issues. Practically you do not play around with machine size or location too often. The price for a VM running 24/7 is WAY higher than with a more traditional VPS provider.