CPU steal on a cheap VPS

[Fairman]

CPU steal on a cheap VPS

Budget virtual servers share physical hardware with many other customers. When neighbours get busy, the host takes CPU time away from some of them, and the performance of a machine can drop without warning.

The symptoms are intermittent: the platform stalls for a second, a chart lags, an expert advisor misses a tick. Nothing looks wrong in the task manager because the machine believes it is running normally.

On Linux there is a clear metric called steal time. On Windows it is harder to see, but a rising system latency and uneven response in simple tests give it away.

For a scalper, reliability matters more than raw power. A modest dedicated resource plan is usually better than a larger shared one, and a provider that guarantees CPU allocation is worth a premium.

Testing at several times of day, particularly during peak trading hours, reveals more than a single benchmark at midnight.

One more useful test is comparing the latency numbers during the provider's peak hours with the quiet ones. A host that looks perfect at 3am can behave very differently when the region is busy.

Has an unreliable VPS ever cost a trade, and how was the cause identified?