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My commentaries and suggestions about Virtual Private Servers (VPS) are distributed pretty widely throughout my botfarm blog, and my advice has changed somewhat along the way. For this reason I thought it would be useful to do an update and summary of my current recommendations for where to use a VPS and how to set it up. On the “how to” front I thought it would be good for me to try to set up a working VPS/Bot combination from a standing start to be able to give a proven step-by-step guide. The tiny commercial bit of my brain is thinking that at some stage this may form a chapter of an ebook, but for now it’s yours for free!

The “why” of VPS use is pretty straightforward – it allows you to run bots and expert advisors round the clock without impacting on your use of local PC equipment and, more importantly, without your use of that equipment disrupting your strategies. It is pretty much essential for running forex Expert Advisors, highly desirable for set and forget Betfair strategies and allows roulette bots to produce blisteringly fast spins, thereby making some strategies accessible which would otherwise be impractical.

One bit of my earlier advice which is now redundant is the whole debate of VNC versus RDP for regular access. It turns out that this doesn’t matter a jot if you use the logmein.com service for your regular access. In constructing the task list below I have simplified the job as much as possible and set out a way to get a roulette bot up and running at 9,000 spins per hour on a remote server while spending the grand total of 2 pounds. In conducting the test this evening, it took almost exactly 90 minutes from start to finish, with occasional family duties intervening.

1.Go to Tagadab.com and navigate to the option to order a VPS500 for a trial price of 1 pound for a week.
2.Choose Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system for an additional 1 pound
3.Pay and wait 10 minutes to be told by email that your server has been provisioned
4.While waiting, go to logmein.com and take out a 30 days free trial of logmein pro2, which you will use for regular access of your system.
5.When your server details are sent by Tagadab, create a desktop shortcut for the windows utility mstsc.exe (or run it from a command line). You need to access your server with this at least on the first time in, using the Administrator userid and the IP address and password shown in your Tagadab control panel.
6.Having logged in to your server as Administrator, close down the configuration panels, which you don’t need, find internet explorer and go to logmein.com to install the local client on your server (using the user details you set up earlier)
7.Download a free 48 hour trial of Roulette Assault from rouletteassault.com and William Hill Casino Club or other Playtech Casino.
8.Configure Roulette Assault to recognise and control the Roulette Pro European Table within the casino you chose (about 10 minutes)
9.Spin and Win! Or just collect spins for later analysis by setting ridiculously long wait periods (eg bet even chances only after 25 consecutive losses)
10.Once you have set your bot running, you can close down the mstsc window and thereafter use logmein.com for all access, whether via iphone, internet cafe or dayjob computer.
On a first pass through I would expect you to find at least one hiccup in the process, but if you are interested in setting up a fully functional botfarm, the above is about the most efficient and economical proof of concept you could devise. If your interests are in forex, you would replace items 7-9 with the downloading of Metatrader 4 from the broker of your choice (such as Alpari or ODL) and your EA from wherever you purchase or develop it. The pokerbots are a little fussy about screen characteristics, but the above setup should not give them a problem.

If anyone runs through the above steps, I would be interested to know whether it all runs smoothly and which points need further clarification. Oh, and don’t forget to cancel your trial subscriptions for Tagadab and Logmein should you decide not to continue. If you’re like me you’ll find them very hard to set aside once you’ve got a taste for what they can do.

If you decide to try your luck, please let me know how you got on via the Botfarm blog – http://thebotfarm.info – where you can find advice on setting up a VPS and many more topics of interest to bot users.

For the top recommendation for roulette bots see the Botfarm’s Roulette Assault page at http://thebotfarm.com/?page_id=696.

I would also enjoy hearing from you with any comments or queries at mark@thebotfarm.com

Best of luck, Mark