VPS hosting of MetaTrader 4 instances

Hi,

Anyone any advice for choosing and running many MT4 instances on a VPS?

Will be running at least 10 instances long term with live accounts so need utmost reliability.

Thanks,

Mike

I have VPS for traders from CNS (http://www.commercialnetworkservices.com).

Their web page looks like from 90′, but they are reliable.

I’m running few instances of MT4 without problems.

Do their servers ever restart? Thats why I stopped using VPS. My provider would restart on some weekends. If any weekend positions were open and being managed with variables, the variables would get reset, and the system would have to be carried out manually the following monday.

no, they don’t restart their servers, that’s VPS for traders, they understand that they just cannot restart the servers at will.

One thing I do with my MT4 instances is put a copy of the desktop shortcut for each into the Windows Startup folder, this way if a computer is restarted for whatever reason, the MT4 terminals all launch on startup.  I do this on my laptops, I hope this would work on the VPS too.

I don’t want to promote CNS to much here, there are surely many other similar services, I have experience only with them.

They have a tool to start MetaTrader instances upon restart. It is really targeted towards traders.

CNS is good.

but in my opinion Linkuphost.com is better.

FXVM.com is also great, but they do often maintaince on servers (once a 2-3 weeks, only at weekends).

VPS is good but dedicated server is better-then its up to you when you restart it…but it costs little bit more than standart VPS.

Hi Patrick,

Yes I think you are right, I will be looking at a dedicated server as I think it gives me more control and is higher performance than VPS.

Anyone have a dedicated server hosted with good service and reasonable prices?

Thanks,

Mike

This isn’t hosting, but I’ve been looking on ebay to buy my own. Finding alot of used tower servers with x2 quadcores (~3GHZ) with 8GB ram for around only 200-300$ USD in working condition with OS/software CDs.

This easily beats renting the newest high end server in the long run IMO if you are only using it to run strategyquant.

Dedicated server for MetaTrader? Sorry but I would say, that You are insane. If you run around 500 instances of Metatrader, then yes ok, but up to 10-15 can be freely managed on VPS without need to pay for Energy etc. Dedicated server would be also good if you run >200 instances but as high frequency trading. Remeber also that vps gives usually very fast internet connection and many of them is cross connected to brokers trading server, which mean that your order is executed in around 1-10ms!

Dedicated server for MetaTrader? Sorry but I would say, that You are insane. If you run around 500 instances of Metatrader, then yes ok, but up to 10-15 can be freely managed on VPS without need to pay for Energy etc. Dedicated server would be also good if you run >200 instances but as high frequency trading. Remeber also that vps gives usually very fast internet connection and many of them is cross connected to brokers trading server, which mean that your order is executed in around 1-10ms!

Actually, for optimizing and backtesting with 8 instances of MT4, and running strategyquant when I’m not doing that. But mainly for MT4 work since most of my strategies are made in EA Wizard since it is my preference.

Hence: “This easily beats renting the newest high end server in the long run IMO if you are only using it to run strategyquant.”

Execution and internet problems are also not a problem from my home internet. I’m 20 minutes away from New York City. It never goes offline, and has excellent executing speed, but I’m not HFT’ing (my strategies are mainly Daily-based) so its a very low concern.

Actually, for optimizing and backtesting with 8 instances of MT4, and running strategyquant 
 

If You are talking about hosting SQ, then I fully agree. What’s more, for SQ every dedicated server would be not enough 😀 

Secondhand dedicated server are good value compared to hosting VPS and is what I’m doing, I’m running my Live MT4 accounts from a virtual machine running atop of XenServer.  Also have my second SQ license running 24×7 at full thread count 

Install free version of XenServer on the box and segment out for your own Virtual machines.

Dedicate a couple of cores to the MT4 live VM instances, use the rest for SQ VM, good use of hardware. 

a Few things to consider though:

1) Servers are noisy (can be VERY noisy)

2) Servers can run hot so might need cooling, i.e. air conditioning.

3) power etc as previously mentioned, but newer ones have green optimisations.

4) Consider Power outages as some raid controller don’t like to be interrupted during writes i.e. a UPS

5) like a PC you will need to have backups etc happening in case of hardware failure.  Replacement hardware can be expensive.

I will go VPS or dedicated server as my Internet and power are prone to disruption (lots of building work going on).

I think for the MT4 Instances a VPS is sufficient, so will use that. I will also get a dedicated server hosted for a 2nd instance of SQ and also for some other applications I’d like to run.

Having an unreliable power and internet means I really need a hosted VPS and server.