Hey guys does anyone utilize a cloud-based service to run Ninjatrader or another product 24/7? How is that working out for you?
If you have a reliable provider - it's wonderful. You don't have to worry when you travel, local electricity/internet outages, etc. If your provider isn't reliable - it's endless headaches. I first used the Amazon cloud, which of course was reliable (except for the one time it famously went down, about a year ago). But it is in Virginia and latency to my broker in NY was 10ms, not bad but the latency was not steady - regularly spiking to 50-200ms for several minutes at a time. So I tried some VPS in NYC (or across the river in Secausus). I ended up trying 4 different providers. Two were just nightmares, with crashes and network downtime. One good one was Automated VPS, about 5ms latency to my broker. Now I use CNS, and have had 100% uptime for the past year, they even have a chart for latency to popular brokers. Latency to my broker is a steady 2-3ms
Only an idiot would do that. Why? Because - have you looked at the prices? Cloud "pay by the hour" generally is a lot more costly than dedicated VPS. CLoud makes sense for fast scaling - 24/7 ninja does not need that. On top, the cloud is on the wrong location You want to be close to your broker. I got myself a quad core Intel machine wit h16gb memory, ssd, hard disc - 180 USD per month. In Chicago, all traffic inclusive (10tb - more than I will ever need). A month has about 730 hours (730.5 to be more exact). That is a per hour price of 24.6 cents. With Winwows Azure that is between a middle and large instance - so, 3 cores, about 5gb memory, storage not included. Ah - nice. Seriously. Compared to 16gb, storage included AND traffic included AND my own hypervisor I control on the hardware. Cloud is great for stuff like backtesting when you need machines for a short time (unless you are larger and those run 24/7 again) - but all the per hour pricing, when taken for months, is only one thing: EXPENSIVE. And the Data Centers are in the middle of nowhere. Go to a reputale data center, look for a machine with a good connection to your broker AND pay less than in the cloud. Basic math. If more people would take it, clouds would be a LITTLE less full.
its a horrible service and price/performance ratio. If latency really matters then you would co- or proximity locate with exchanges or ecns or brokers you connect to. But you would do it by renting rack space and deploy your own server. The memory provided by the firm you named is laughable and it almost sounds like its not even a dedicated server they offer. But even if it is their prices are outrageous, not absolutely speaking but relative to what they offer). Even to host a few websites I would rent a better equipped server.
fully agree with your points through I would never opt for a VPS when deploying trading algorithms on it. I fully agree with your cloud criticism for systematic trading but let's be honest cloud technologies are a game changer for most everything that is not latency and throughput sensitive. I never ever wanna see web apps again that do not store settings and configurations anyplace else than on the cloud. But as this focuses on automated trading I concur with all your points except VPS.
Yes and no. THe good pont with web apps is that normally they do not need the same processing power all the time . Clouds rule there. Being mentioned in TV - spin up another 100 instances to handle the traffic (unless you ahve database side problems). Most websites are time based - unless you are amazon (worldwide presense) you do not pay for the same capacity all day if you get larger. Clouds HAVE their use. I really like Microsofts approach here that goes "Hybrid" cloud - you own some of the servers, rent some VM's, move loads between your offices and the data center as you need. They ARE a game changer. But when you need "base load" they are expensve. I Have no problem trtading from a VM, though - IF the algo is not super time sensitive AND - big and - IF you control the hardware.
re VPS the whole point is that you do not control the hardware. VPS is a software virtualization whereas several clients share the same hardware, hence no client is in control of the full hardware. When a VPS promises x amount of ram, x number cores, x gb of hard drive storage then that may be true but its only because the virtualization software partitions the resources. It is the same as if you partition your hard drive. While street wisdom is that a damaged partition does not affect other partitions that is not true at all. A smart algorithm can kill the hard drive head and that affects all partitions not just the one a hostile algorithm had access to.
Bullshit. Comes too often from you. Some common sense training may be in order. The point of a VPS Is to have smaller instances than hardware, and allow a lot of other things. It ups the utilization of hardware - which is also relevant as there are limits how small you can get with hardware these days, even in times of ARM processors (a rack unit is quite expensive to house something as small as an inhouse domain controller). There are a lot of scenarios where you want or even legally need control of the hardware and build your own cloud. Pretty much every company larger than your basement has virtualization on their own servers. If you want virtualization and performance you need control of the hardware - either directly (own it, manage it), or contractual (SLA's, like specifying that every core oyou get is 100% backed by a physical core, i.t. a quad core machine wont get other machines over a certain size. Even if you control the hardware there are a lot of very interesting advantages to deploy virtuatlization, in case you ever bother about the real world. Among them for example driver independence and server independence - if something happens I reinstall a new server and fix it up, then restore the VM - but never change the drivers in the VM. You can also easily move them around for scheduled hardware maintenance, or to resize them when requirements change. It is a terrific advantage for a company to have both. Interesting enough that is like VmWare m,akes their money - not hosters, but enterprises that are buying a lot of their licenses. Or microsoft - Hyper-V is free, but the management infrastructure costs, and if you ever get a job in a real company you will see companies having thousands of virtual servers. And still demanding control of the hardware for a lot of reasons. There are companies you ahve to argue when you want a physical box - rule is: as much virtual as possible. And they own their own infrastruture still. Not "the servers", more "the datacenters". Again, please try getting some education.
Dude, which part is Bullshit. Each time you call my content bullshit and then repeat exactly what I said. You appear incredibly stupid that way. * I said: VPS is a software virtualization whereas several clients share the same hardware (client in the sense of "owners"/renters of the virtualization partition) -> You said: The point of a VPS Is to have smaller instances than hardware -> result: WTF is the difference. Exactly what I said!!! * I said: All vps that are up for rent are virtualizations where you do not control the hardware, in fact the hardware is shared with other subscribers that you may know nothing about. AND that is a fact. Whether you slice and dice your own server into virtualizations HAS ZERO RELEVANCE TO THIS TOPIC UNDER DISCUSSION!!!! -> Again you are nitpicking terminology in your weirdo German style. The point of this thread was about cloud computing and later moved towards VPS (you steered it that way). In that context VPS means RENTED VPS instances which refers again to my point above that in this case there is no way that you have control over the hardware, period. Of course you can rent a fully dedicated server and then install virtualization software on it and re-rent the virtualization partitions , but again this has ZERO RELEVANCE TO WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT. When you see an ad online which talks about renting a VPS then that means you have no control over the hardware. My goodness. Weirdo!!!