Which VPS are recommended for live accounts using EAs?

[rebeljedi]

I went with the value edition, since I can always dial it up if I need to. I did up the memory to 512 in the initial order. As for memory usage, the first instance takes 128MB, but each additional instance is under 20MB-40MB each. I suspect I will learn just how bad the memory leaks are in Empty4 over time.

I didn't even consider running it on 64-bit. It didn't seem worth the potential headache to find out.

George

Thanks for sharing, George.
I did some checks and found that Empty4 installs only on 32-bit Windows.

[rebeljedi]

In the spirit of forward testing, I decided to give CNS a trial run. I didn't shop around beforehand, just went with one of the three my criminal will pay me to use.

What I had to do:

• Pay
  Login
  Copy my local directory to the server
  Launch terminal.exe and log in again

OK, that's not all I had to do. I followed their directions to get email working using their smtp server, but for some reason it wouldn't send email to my pager. I suspect my pager company is blocking them. So I set up hMailServer, but without delivery through gmail. Works like a champ.

I also tried to use their AutoBoot software to manage the open instances of Empty4. I think it works, but doesn't do what I want. Perhaps it was just annoying during initial setup and would be fine once I was done. I may come back to it later. The purpose of the software is to monitor your apps and react to negative events the way you want (restarting app, rebooting server, send an email, etc.)

I'm currently running 2 live EAs (one currency each) and 2 demo (22 and 26 currencies), and I think I could easily run 2-3 more EAs. I have two small live accounts I am using for this test, just in case things go nuts.

I'll post again in a week or two and let you know how it is going.

I'm happy so far.

George

Hi George, all,
thought to give those interested an update.
Thanks to George (aka gaheitman), I rented the Trader's VPS edition from CNS. Being extremely new to VPS, it took a bit of figuring out what needed to be done.
I have tested 4 EAs on 2 demo MT4s and these worked well. I am now running EA on live account.

So far, I am happy with their service.
Thanks to George's explanation on Autoboot, I explored it and it works well! It's doing what it's programmed to do.
Their response to my tickets have been reasonable - they reply within minutes. I have not had an account threatening situation (and I don't wish to have), so I have not been able to test this response.

Thanks to George who took the jump first!

[garyfritz]

I did some checks and found that Empty4 installs only on 32-bit Windows.

You were misinformed. I'm currently running 3 copies of Empty4 on my 64-bit Windows 7 laptop.

[rebeljedi]

I did some checks and found that Empty4 installs only on 32-bit Windows.

You were misinformed. I'm currently running 3 copies of Empty4 on my 64-bit Windows 7 laptop.

Hi,
thanks for your note.
You are right, Empty4 runs on 64bit Win7 and I noticed it installs in the Program Files x86 folder which is for 32bit programs. I should have been clearer.

[KevinT]

I did some checks and found that Empty4 installs only on 32-bit Windows.

You were misinformed. I'm currently running 3 copies of Empty4 on my 64-bit Windows 7 laptop.

Hi,
thanks for your note.
You are right, Empty4 runs on 64bit Win7 and I noticed it installs in the Program Files x86 folder which is for 32bit programs. I should have been clearer.

Hi,
thanks for your heads up on this.
I'm currently running 2 copies of Empty4 on a 64-bit Windows 7 laptop for two years now and you are both right, I noticed it wants to install in the Program Files x86 folder which is for 32bit programs, but I have them on the HD root "C:\MT4xyz" and from a trading and EA running point o view it works flawlessly! Go figure...

[lilac]

I am searching a forex vps provider to run 3-4 Empty4 accounts, testing a different EA on each. I found this one had some good reviews: www.iwishost.com/forex-vps-hosting.html, servers located in US/UK, and seems to be a good deal... did anyone try this vps company? I want to check some more good or bad experiences before I give them a try.

[Nipponho]

Hi Lillac,
I am now using iwisthost $15 plan. It’s ok, but it can be a bit retarded at times because my plan only has 512mb ram. But otherwise, running 3 Empty4 platform should be ok.

When I was sourcing around some time in april, my first choice was UCV. At that time, they had a $12, so comparatively, it is $3 cheaper than iwisthost. But when I was about to make payment, they charged $15. A $3 software charge was imposed, which they didn’t mention it upfront, and only impose it at final stage when u are about to make payment. I didn’t like the way they do business, so I chose iwist host despite them offering a lower ram at same price.

You can compare the plans. It does looks like UCV offers better value than iwist.
http://www.ucvhost.com/VPS/Forex/ForexVps.aspx

Both of them offers non forex VPS which is cheaper than their forex vps. I’m not sure if it can be used for our demos. Maybe someone knowledgeable here can advise us on this? If it can be done, I would like to consider switching as u get more ram speed for same price.

[rebeljedi]

Hi,
thanks for your heads up on this.
I'm currently running 2 copies of Empty4 on a 64-bit Windows 7 laptop for two years now and you are both right, I noticed it wants to install in the Program Files x86 folder which is for 32bit programs, but I have them on the HD root "C:\MT4xyz" and from a trading and EA running point o view it works flawlessly! Go figure...

Thanks, KevinT for sharing this. I tried installing on C:\ directly and noticed Empty4 works smoother with almost no connection issue. Those of you who still install in x86 folder should try this.

[garyfritz]

You should never install Empty4 under c:\Program Files (x86) anyway. Normal programs like Empty4 aren't allowed to create files there in Vista or Windows 7. When you install there, all the files that Empty4 creates (mq4 files, set files, etc) get stuck in a special spot under c:\users\<user> but windows pretends (badly) that they're still under c:\Program Files (x86). Empty4 often gets confused by the inconsistent behavior. Install it somehwree else -- like C:\MT4xyz or C:\Temp\MyMT4s or whatever -- and you won't have those problems.

[KevinT]

Most of the criminals have several data feeds. You can check by clicking in the lower right corner of your Empty4 window. Here is an example.

From this it is still unknown where the data servers are located. But there is always a solution. Make sure only one instance of Empty4 is running at this time. Bring up your good old command prompt. Type command: netstat -b -n

From the list, lines that belong to terminal.exe is interesting. What you need is the Foreign address, in our case 72.26.216.25 To find it's geographical location use this site: http://www.iplocation.net Now you know the location of one of your crim's data server. You have to repeat the process after you pick a different data feed from the Empty4 corner list.

I chose my VPS service by its geo location. I did these checks first and of course after going online with the VPS I pinged all the data feed IPs to prove the good latency time. The results were absolutely fine. A nice little tool for pinging is PingInfoView.

I hope this helps guys!

hi SPR,
once again, thanks very much for sharing this insight especially about the cmd command (new to me)!
Unfortunately, my broker's IP address cannot be pinged. It states "request timed out". Apparently, the server has some security feature.
At least I found out where the server is!

Cool and thank you guys so much... BTW is there a way of testing broker latency or trade execution times from within the Empty4 session / any other way of gathering useful info on the subject :