Remotely Run Betting Assistant

[London_Calling]

I'm also about to take the plunge so was just wondering how everyone was doing and if they'd like to add anything?

Have to say greenfingers' later comments made me sit up as cpu is exactly the reason why I want to try a vp - did this settle down for you, greenfingers?


Otherwise, what a really helpful thread - thanks to the several who have contributed!



*goes back to examine his code*

[greenfingers]

Hi London_Calling. I'm still with the VPS as I really find it useful to free-up my home computer for all the other stuff I want to run at the same time as the spreadsheet. Not having to leave my computer on at home when I'm out is convenient too and when I go on holiday I can leave it running safely.

I have reduced the CPU requirement of my first spreadsheet to about 60%. I mainly did this simply by reducing the number horses being monitored in each race! The strategy never involved any outsiders so it was a waste of CPU monitoring them. I also bought the "Fast Excel" product after reading their Excel programming tips linked to by osknows in this thread http://gruss-software.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5074
What I learnt from using FastExcel was useful and a good lesson for building spreadsheets in the most efficient manner and it did reduce the CPU requirements of my spreadsheet a little more.

I've since written a spreadsheet for a totally different strategy which is technically simpler, using entirely VBA (there's not a single formula on the spreadsheet) and all reading/writing to and from the spreadsheet is via arrays (good tips from joker joe, thanks!). This runs at 20-25% CPU including BA at the fastest refresh rate of 0.2 seconds!

As I said before, I was really surprised at first when the VPS was running at a higher CPU than my trusty little laptop. If having more CPU available to you is your only reason for using a VPS then I would expect you to be disappointed unless you are willing to shell out for the packages with more CPU that some providers offer. Tagadab do have a 1-week cheap trial so I'd suggest them or any other provider that has a free/cheap trial so you can test out for sure with your particular requirements. I didn't find any others with a trial period which was a surprise. Good luck!

[Steve Voltage]

When i used Tagadab a while back i found that the countdown clock timer was a few seconds behind that of my own pc, is this still the case greenfingers?

[Steve Voltage]

one thing about tagadab that i have noticed is that their clock is about seven seconds behind the clock on my own pc. i have installed an atomic clock on tagadab and my pc but the time difference remains the same. would an atomic clock work with a virtual server? i understand that ba works of the clock on your pc and not from a clock from betfair, is this right? if so any time difference could be crucial imo.

[greenfingers]

When i used Tagadab a while back i found that the countdown clock timer was a few seconds behind that of my own pc, is this still the case greenfingers?

Yes, its about 5 seconds fast. Strange really, you'd have thought it's pretty easy for them to put right, but it doesn't affect my automated stuf at all. I guess if you want to do something x seconds before the post time you can just compensate for the 5 seconds in your code.

[Steve Voltage]

When i used Tagadab a while back i found that the countdown clock timer was a few seconds behind that of my own pc, is this still the case greenfingers?

Yes, its about 5 seconds fast. Strange really, you'd have thought it's pretty easy for them to put right, but it doesn't affect my automated stuf at all. I guess if you want to do something x seconds before the post time you can just compensate for the 5 seconds in your code.

Thanks for the reply.

[London_Calling]

greenfingers - Hi, thanks for responding. Glad it's till going well for you!

I had my first full day on a Tagadab VP yesterday and it went very smoothly once I'd configured out how to access the vp desktop. Response times are indeed much improved.

As it was for you, it seems the issue remains cpu maxing out on refreshing, so it's now all about improving the code.

It's a shame we can't select what data to import into BA from the Betfair servers, as I'd imagine that could make a huge performance difference.

Thanks again!

[andrew@tagadab]

When i used Tagadab a while back i found that the countdown clock timer was a few seconds behind that of my own pc, is this still the case greenfingers?

Yes, its about 5 seconds fast. Strange really, you'd have thought it's pretty easy for them to put right, but it doesn't affect my automated stuf at all. I guess if you want to do something x seconds before the post time you can just compensate for the 5 seconds in your code.

Thanks for the reply.

Hi, I work for Tagadab and re the sync issue between clocks there is indeed a fix for this. We can decouple the clock on your VPS upon request (email support@tagadab.com) and then you can run time sync software: this will fix the problem.

I hope this helps.

Andrew Cooper
andrew@tagadab.com

Main: 0845 045 1101
DDI: 020 7685 8351

Tagadab Limited
21 Southampton Row
London WC2B 5HA

[Lewis]

Just to add my experience, I have two VPS servers and have found them excellent, 3-4 months of use and no interuptions.

Andrew - Any suggestions on getting the best performance from your servers for someone who is computer literate but has never used/optimised a server before and is using it as a form of trading platform? Really just being greedy as my ping/response times are already pretty damn low

[andrew@tagadab]

Hi Lewis,

By all means drop me an email at andrew@tagadab.com with your customer/server ref on it and I'll see if there are any recommendations we can make. Without knowing what applications you're running and what your existing setup is though I can't really say much of worth...

I'm glad to hear you're happy with the service though. All feedback is useful but I have a definite preference for the positive variety

Best regards,
Andrew

[London_Calling]

Just to offer something to a thread that's been helpful to me, I came across this and thought it useful for diagnosis of cpu-related issues:

Start button > All Programs > Administrative Tools > Performance

You can fiddle around in there for all kinds of data - right click is the way to go, I found.

Cheers.

[London_Calling]

Anyone else not able to connect to their Tagadab server space this evening?

[Lewis]

Went down just before 810 windsor for me

[andrew@tagadab]

Hi, I hope this isn't too late to be of any use but service has been restored and the explanation (which I've shamelessly cribbed from our website) is as follows:

26/07/2010 20:49 This issue is now resolved. It was caused by a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack on one of our customers. This is the first such attack since our network upgrade a few months ago, and our network was not affected, in fact the impact was so slight that no alarms were raised. However an upstream link was almost saturated. We will work with our network provider to ensure this is dealt with automatically in future.

The full story is at www.tagadab.com/servicestatus

Andrew

[throwmeadisc]

You could try this to enhance your performance on your server by doing this:

Right Click: My Computer > Properties
> Advanced
> Performance : Settings
> Advanced
> Processor Scheduling > select - Programs
> Memory Usage > select - Programs

Click OK to finish and then you will need to restart your server.

Hope that helps.

Al