Rackspace
Gallant VPS finds on-demand support for an on-demand market via Rackspace Hosting
The Foreign Exchange Market is the largest and oldest market around, trading over $3 trillion daily. Brokers are constantly buying and selling 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. They need to be continuously connected to view, monitor, and trade in real time. In this volatile market, every second of downtime costs thousands of dollars. Gallant FX, the first and only web-based proprietary hosting platform, needed the infrastructure that could withstand this strenuous demand and guarantee 100% uptime. They found that and much more at Rackspace.
Situation
Gallant FX inc. is a Foreign Exchange liquidity provider that offers a wide range of trading technologies and services in a unique Forex Trading environment. As the first and only web-accessible MetaTrader platform, the Gallant VPS can be accessed securely on different operating systems—anytime, anywhere by hundreds of traders. Metatrader is a trusted online trading platform designed for financial institutions dealing with Forex, CFD, and futures market. It is used by hundreds of brokerage companies and banks worldwide.
One of the key benefits of using Metatrader is script writing capabilities for automated trading called Expert Advisors. Expert Advisors (EA) are algorithms written by developers that enable trades to be placed on the Metatrader 4 without the user’s assistance. It is essentially a robot trading a client’s account according to the parameters that are set. A VPS creates a unique environment allowing the robot to trade up to 24 hours a day without Metatrader running on a client’s PC.
One setback EA developers experience is pirating of software. If security measures are not met, especially in a Windows operating system, hackers can easily access code.
Gallant isn’t just your run-of-the mill Windows VPS. It’s the only VPS that runs on a UNIX environment. Because Gallant chose a UNIX hosting server over a Microsoft operating system, anyone with internet connection can directly access their own MetaTrader platform, whether they’re running on Mac OSX, Windows, or even their iPhone. Not only is it extremely accessible, it’s also extremely safe. Customers are safe from IP theft and other software security issues found in the Windows Operating System (commonly found with all other VPS providers). “Whereas stealing someone’s IP is easy to do on a window’s platform, it’s impossible to do on Gallant. There are a lot of pirated copies of these trading robots floating around on the internet, but Gallant is the safest,” said Simon Grunfeld, President and CTO of Gallant FX Inc.
Security isn’t the only issue for brokers in the Forex market. With trillions of dollars traded per day, 100% uptime is crucial and can make or break a business. End-users need constant live access to monitor and execute trades. Gallant needed a provider that is proven to be reliable, user-friendly, and well-insured. They also needed the hardware that would withstand the heavy demand. “We needed a lot of handholding in the beginning. We had some software knowledge in-house but lacked the networking and equipment,” Grunfeld explains.
Failed attempts to collocate and host with lower-end hosting providers led them to Rackspace. Servers were crashing because they couldn’t handle the load; upgrades were lacking and required slow turn around processes; hours were wasted trying to deal with customer support; and their clients needed a name they could trust when it came to hosting. With Rackspace, Gallant found a home for their application that both they and their clients could rely on.
Solution
Gallant FX came online with Rackspace in November of 2008 and immediately found themselves requiring rapid scaling abilities. They started with a configuration of two Dell R900s, a Dell 2950, and a Cisco firewall. Within the same afternoon, Gallant found itself needing more servers. They placed a call to their account team requesting a quick turn-around outside of normal Rackspace build times for these devices. Their Rackspace account team quickly coordinated a move in the datacenter to accommodate the amount of physical hardware and space the servers would need to be together.
A day ahead of schedule, the datacenter move was complete and two additional Dell R900s were added to the configuration with no interruption. The following day, Gallant requested three more Dell R900s. The account team realized the rate of growth Gallant was experiencing and wanted to ensure Rackspace could keep up with their demand. Within 36 hours, the build from conception to online was complete. To date, Gallant has a total of nine R900s with Rackspace, ranging from 48 GB of RAM each up to 128 GB.
Gallant VPS has a lot of things in store for Rackspace. They plan to partner with Rackspace as they continue to expand their business. On the horizon are aspirations to eventually build mainstream platforms beyond MetaTrader and aggregation quote engines. In the immediate future, they have a huge project lined up. This January, Gallant FX will be the technology sponsor for Man vs. Machine, a Forex trading contest that pits humans against automated trading bots, also known as “expert advisors.” This twelve-week competition will simultaneously run thousands of automated trading systems (MACHINE) and manual trades by hand (MAN) to see who earns the most. With over a thousand developers and trading systems running on Gallant’s infrastructure, they are working closely with their account team to determine what steps are necessary to ensure uptime and avoid interruptions.
Benefits
For the Gallant VPS, Rackspace has been a great infrastructure partner. Their website boosts, “We choose Rackspace, due to the quality and level of service: on-site, 24x7x365 administrative support that monitors and takes preventative measures, to remove any possibility of downtime. No other hosting company provides this type of infrastructure.” The support and monitoring are crucial to this company, which only has one lead tech on their staff.
Gallant has relied on Rackspace to advise them on the type of configurations needed to build out their application. In the midst of a recent account review, Rackspace proactively caught an additional upgrade for Gallant’s OS that slipped under the radar. They quickly implemented necessary changes to prevent any interruptions in their connectivity. “With Rackspace, not only do we get on-demand support, we get forward-looking support. They make things happen,” Grunfeld says.
“It is our goal to lead our industry with new innovations in development and technology; with Rackspace we have the right relationship to make it happen”