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Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
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I did the same. Powered up Sunday, Powered down Friday. When I say logged on, I should elaborated that I meant reconnect to the VM, it was already running. It was on the re-connection that at times it was like it woke up and executed trades that should have been done hours ago.
Test connecting from another IP address to verify connections are being rejected from the 'foreign' IP
Azure VM -Secure Remote Desktop by IP Address
I call this solution shaky because as soon as our IP address changes, we will need to update the RDP rule in Azure. Our IP does not change too often, but it is a concern at most and a nuisance at least. I consider this above a temporary solution. However, it is free and easy to setup and change.
Permanent solutions, from cheapest and easiest, to most and expensive difficult:
1) Get a static IP from my internet provider (not an option for residential, so cost is unknown)
For me this would require upgrading to business class internet at home. This may make sense, as I trade professionally and can classify the internet as a business expense. I run a VPN server from my office, so even as we travel, we can get to the VM through our network.
2) Use a third party VPN and get a dedicated IP address (~ US$6 per month using NordVPN, our current VPN provider)
I would connect to VPN using my dedicated IP, the add the IP to the rule shown above. This will probably be our failsafe and solution while we travel.
3) Setup a Virtual Network and add VPN service in Azure; then connect to RDP via that VPN server (~US$20 month).
We are billed on usage of the VPN, but we can have 10 active connections going at the same price. I won't go into details because I am just starting to understand it.
Right now, as a trading organization, we are in growth mode, so cost is a concern and we want to keep our monies focused on operations, not back office. As we continue to mature, those costs will be easier to absorb into the business. I am balancing cost and complexity, with security being paramount.
The current solution works for now. If anyone have a better or more elegant solution, I would love to hear it.
Okay, I have a cool thing to share about Azure. I can monitor and start/stop the VM from my phone. This is a pretty important feature. I can see CPU utilization and a few other stats. Pretty cool stuff.
I looked at JIT with Azure, but our connection may be open at least 120 hours per week. That is over 70% of the time.... I would much rather restrict by IP or Azure VPN. If cost were no issue, I would deploy Azure VPN and be done with it. Maybe later this year.
Okay, I said I was done, but I did discover a useful tool for our Azure VM (and other services, presumably): the Azure app. I can check my VM's when I am out and about, and do some basic things like stop, restart, and monitor system resource utilization.
As far as trading is concerned, we are live (as in live trading) as of last night and everything is executing perfectly. I'm a very happy customer to this point.
Are you still running your Azure Standard D2s v3 (2 vcpus, 8 GiB memory) VM configuration? Have you had any problems/ issues running your TS account(s) on that VM?
I am leaning towards the MS Azure Standard D4s v3 as it offers 4 vcpus and 16Gib. Any tips/recommendations?
I have been running for I don't know how long now, almost a year maybe? Anyhow, I would say that my config is probably the minimum I would run on, but execution has not been a problem at all. I don't do anything on the VM but trade:
TradeStation 10
2 accounts
11 systems/strategies, full auto; mostly daily systems with few intraday systems
CPU utilization runs between 10-15%
I power down/deallocate the VM at close of market Friday; Sunday I power up about 1 hour before market open, apply system updates, etc. Powering down saves some money. You need to not allow automatic updates in Windows.
One issue I have, which I believe is with TradeStation, is that sometimes it just shuts down.... not crash, just disappears for no reason as if it was never running. I always save my desktop and workspace. So I have had to be careful with that; I minimize TradeStation and wait few seconds before closing RDP. Or I just leave RDP open and there is no issue. I don't think TS plays well with Remote Desktop (RDP), as I have had issues with the two on my internal network here in my office.
Running on a VM has been great, especially with some recent internet issues outside my house, which was causing disconnections for a few weeks until they fixed it.
You config may be a little overkill, especially the memory. TS can only address just over 2GB in memory before it craps out (it is 32-bit), so more memory does not add anything beneficial. I do not do anything but trade on the VM, all other work (development, optimization, etc.) are all on my physical workstation.