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Frequently Asked Questions

Have some questions? Find some answers below.

What is a Forex VPS?

If you are unfamiliar with "VPS" and other terminology, this article will help explain the goals of virtualized hosting.

"VPS" is an acronym for Virtual Private Server, sometimes referred to as a "VM" (virtual machine). It is a common variant of web hosting, and could also be called a variant of dedicated server hosting. Read more about the technical nature of a VPS below.

A datacenter, or data center, is a professional computer hosting facility where businesses locate physical hardware. This is done to benefit from direct connections to ISPs, and to access electrical and cooling resources required for 24x7x365 operation of computers.

The premise of a VPS is to leverage the advanced benefits of physical colocation in a datacenter, while providing an end-user service that is manageable and affordable. This is accomplished with the use of virtualization technologies (called hypervisors) that manage the partitioning, or virtualization, of physical hosts into smaller sub-units, where each sub-unit runs its own isolated operating system. It is akin to setting up multiple user accounts on a computer, and allowing all of them to be used at one time, with the crucial difference that each user has an entirely separate operating system.

As an example, a fully dedicated server may have dual 6-core CPUs for a total of 12 CPU cores, and 64GB of RAM (quite a lot compared to an average system). Using virtualization technology, this server can be divided into 8 sub-units, each with 8GB of RAM, 1 or 2 CPU cores, and a separate installation of Windows or Linux. The sub-unit can then be interfaced with as a completely separate system. One user could shut down or reboot, or even crash, without affecting the other users. This is the main advantage to virtualized hosting.

Virtualization plays a major role in many areas of business and IT, and it is also beginning to play a significant role in forex trading and the hosting of financial applications. Given that trading and financial applications often require more stability and faster connectivity than any other type of application, the benefits of virtualized hosting suit it perfectly:

  • Access to advanced hardware for a fraction of the full cost of colocating your own system.
  • As above, the ability to utilize top-tier data networks and connectivity, without owning the entire contract yourself.
  • Configuration of fail-over and high-availability systems, to ensure continuity of hosted applications.
  • Easy scalability, allowing you to start with only the resources you need, and expand later.
  • We perform professional maintenance and administration of the physical hardware and network components at no additional cost.

Who should use a Forex VPS?

Among our clients, the following are some of the most common reasons to utilize VPS hosting for forex trading:

You would like to move MT4 to a remote desktop that will be online 24/7, for the sake of convenience and security.
Computer crashes and slowdowns, internet disconnections, and other distractions are the last things you need when trading. Using a remote forex VPS helps eliminate any inconsistency in your trading system. In a worse-case scenario, you can live chat or email us to get immediate help with your VPS and software running there.

You have a forex expert advisor, or many EAs, that you need to test in a stable environment for weeks or months.
Forex VPS systems do not shutdown or reboot, and are designed to have the best possible quality of connection to brokers and financial institutions. For these reasons, forex VPS hosting is ideal forward-testing MT4 EAs and other automated trading software.

You already have a profitable EA or automated trading portfolio, and require a stable remote environment to optimize returns from your system.
For all of the same reasons mentioned above, forex hosting is ideal for deploying established, profiting strategies, in order to give them an additional edge in fastest possible exeuction speed.

Your system or software requires ultra-low latency connection to the broker.
Since our systems are hosted directly adjacent to major financial data networks in New York, London, Zurich they can achieve latency as low as ~1ms to a large number of brokers and trading services.

You are frequently away from your computer or trading station.
A trading VPS runs on a remote server located in a data center, and can be accessed from any PC or mobile device via RDP. This means that you can "screen in" to your remote desktop from any location, while leaving the applications on the remote desktop to run uninterrupted.

Your orders are executed poorly due to long distance between your broker(s) and your location.
Hosting your MetaTrader 4 platforms on a remote VPS will improve the speed of order executions, since the trading machine will be closer to the destination networks, even while you access the VPS from your location.

Why use a VPS for forex trading?

If you are wondering about the advantages of forex VPS hosting, this article will explain why VPS hosting is highly beneficial to trading. The benefits can be summarized in those primary areas:

Speed
The speed of order execution is usually of the highest importance for traders, especially for those who run automated trading systems. To achieve maximum performance for trading applications, it is necessary to host them as near as possible to the services and networks they will be interfacing with, such as brokers and other financial institutions, as well as account managers and signal providers. In the most common scenario, these networks are located at a few key points in New York City, London or Zurich.
FXVM’s forex VPS hosting is an affordable and easy-to-manage way of obtaining connection speed that is very close to the fastest available for trading applications. In fact, we are confident enough to guarantee that our networks in New York and London deliver lower latency––meaning faster connectivity––to major brokers and financial networks than any other VPS solution, which will result in significantly improved order execution for your trades.

Security
Of no less importance, adequate system security is critical for all applications, whether an individual trader's MetaTrader 4 platform or advanced backend financial software. There are implicit security benefits gained by offloading your software to a remote system; in addition, our Windows Server VPS templates are continuously updated to protect from intruders and other threats. On the physical hardware side, we have taken great care to prevent critical failures by making each aspect of our platform redundant. Our host servers and core network components are monitored 24/7 for emerging issues or points of congestion, and are proactively managed by our 24/7 NOC team in conjunction with Technical Support.

Accessibility
Just like a website would not be reliably accessible if it was hosted from a home or office computer (instead of a web hosting server), trading software becomes much more reliable when moved to a VPS or dedicated hosting solution. The tools and protocols built-in to our service, such as RDP (Remote Desktop) and VNC, allow you to easily connect to your forex VPS from anywhere, with no extra setup or configuration necessary. This allows for:

  • Starting MT4 or other applications on the remote VPS once, and keeping them online 24/7 throughout reboots of your local PC or disconnections from the internet.
  • Accessing your trading platform on-the-go or from different devices, like a PC, laptop, tablet, and phone, without interfering with the software running on the VPS.
  • Setting up multiple platforms or accounts on the same VPS, and delegating user access to allow multiple people to view the desktop simultaneously, all from separate locations.

Will slippage be reduced by using a VPS?

Yes, absolutely. We cannot guarantee the complete elimination of slippage, as there are some factors outside of our control, however we hope to provide a service that significantly reduces slippage. You can expect faster and more accurate fills when trading with our Forex VPS.

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