Virtualization in trading environment

Hi Guys,

This is a very specific question I need to ask and I am hoping someone on the boards might have some experience with this.

Does anyone here have any experience operating virtual trading systems in a common trading floor environment?

I am looking at products such as VMware View (the old VDI fad), with vm connectors on HP thin clients specifically. Or any differently branded solutions guys and girls might be using in trading environments OR environments where network heavy financial applications (like Bloomberg, Reuters, ICE, Xtrader etc) are provided via virtual machines.

I hope someone might be able to give me some good stories or advice?

Please!

Thanks,

Pash

PS. Sorry i should of added one other thing, thinapp - anyone used this funcationality in a app heavy environment which has lots of financial based apps?

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Turgon

Pash wrote: »

Hi Guys,

This is a very specific question I need to ask and I am hoping someone on the boards might have some experience with this.

Does anyone here have any experience operating virtual trading systems in a common trading floor environment?

I am looking at products such as VMware View (the old VDI fad), with vm connectors on HP thin clients specifically. Or any differently branded solutions guys and girls might be using in trading environments OR environments where network heavy financial applications (like Bloomberg, Reuters, ICE, Xtrader etc) are provided via virtual machines.

I hope someone might be able to give me some good stories or advice?

Please!

Thanks,

Pash

PS. Sorry i should of added one other thing, thinapp - anyone used this funcationality in a app heavy environment which has lots of financial based apps?

Still waiting huh? Im not sure too many folks work in financial environments on TE. When I used to work in the software development space for FX trading it was Java apps with an Oracle backend all working on dedicated hardware. No VMWare back then. Hopefully someone with a more current portfolio can chime in.

Pash

Turgon wrote: »

Still waiting huh? Im not sure too many folks work in financial environments on TE. When I used to work in the software development space for FX trading it was Java apps with an Oracle backend all working on dedicated hardware. No VMWare back then. Hopefully someone with a more current portfolio can chime in.

Hey Turgon, cheers for the response and thank you for sharing your history there! Out of interest, what was your role and responsibility in the FX trading section?

Im just very interested in hearing from anyone who has used VMware View in a production environment, especially if they are in the trading financial sector. Ive begun to do loads of reading myself but one of the main reasons I value techexams so much, is because of hearing real life experiences of products or concepts.

Cheers,

Pash

eMeS

Pash wrote: »

Hi Guys,

This is a very specific question I need to ask and I am hoping someone on the boards might have some experience with this.

Does anyone here have any experience operating virtual trading systems in a common trading floor environment?

I am looking at products such as VMware View (the old VDI fad), with vm connectors on HP thin clients specifically. Or any differently branded solutions guys and girls might be using in trading environments OR environments where network heavy financial applications (like Bloomberg, Reuters, ICE, Xtrader etc) are provided via virtual machines.

I hope someone might be able to give me some good stories or advice?

Please!

Thanks,

Pash

PS. Sorry i should of added one other thing, thinapp - anyone used this funcationality in a app heavy environment which has lots of financial based apps?

I have a heavy financial services background, and I can tell you that virtualization is encountered at many different levels in that industry.

One solution that I'm familiar with was one that used Citrix products to deliver various applications to desktops. When I say "familiar" in this case I mean I know that it was there and used and considered part of an IT service that was delivered..I did no hands-on support or implementation in this case.

I have worked with companies in this industry both large and small, and what I would say is that I've seen virtualization activities more often than not in the larger companies.

Not sure if any of this helps, but if you can elaborate a bit on your requirements I might be able to pull something a bit more useful out of the memory banks.

MS

Pash

eMeS wrote: »

I have a heavy financial services background, and I can tell you that virtualization is encountered at many different levels in that industry.

One solution that I'm familiar with was one that used Citrix products to deliver various applications to desktops. When I say "familiar" in this case I mean I know that it was there and used and considered part of an IT service that was delivered..I did no hands-on support or implementation in this case.

I have worked with companies in this industry both large and small, and what I would say is that I've seen virtualization activities more often than not in the larger companies.

Not sure if any of this helps, but if you can elaborate a bit on your requirements I might be able to pull something a bit more useful out of the memory banks.

MS

Hi Emes, thanks for your response.

One of our clients whom operates a small trading floor (20/30 traders at any one time) is rapidly expanding this year and recruiting in several more front office traders. They will more than likely be moving office to accommodate with the new influx of staff.

Our clients own FSA requirements say that a trading workstation should be down for no longer than 48 hours, but realisticly that is way too long a period resulting in huge business loss.

My manager has asked me to look into any virtualization products that enable streamed applications, Virtual Desktops with enterprise management features, virtual backup/storage solutions.

One of my main concerns is how to provide the trading apps on a virtualized backbone. Applications such as Reuters 3000Xtra and Bloomberg trading APP, Xtrader (from trading technologies) are all very network heavy applications, requiring constant data streaming from our information vendors.

We have existing blade server technology and fairly powerful HP full tower desktops. But we have very old ghosted images of these workstations, and no images at all of the newest trader workstations.

Any advice at all is much apprechiated, I have started to read about but I am very new to Virtual Desktop.

Cheers,

astorrs

1st question - how many monitors do the traders use and at what resolution? (this will have a large impact on the possible solutions)

2nd question - what kind of connectivity (bandwidth and latency) will be available between the data center/server room and the traders desks?

finally, and most importantly - what is the business/technical/political (;)) problem you are trying to solve? from your last post the only thing I can gather is an improved MTTR, but I assume there's more to it than that...

Pash

astorrs wrote: »

1st question - how many monitors do the traders use and at what resolution? (this will have a large impact on the possible solutions)

2nd question - what kind of connectivity (bandwidth and latency) will be available between the data center/server room and the traders desks?

finally, and most importantly - what is the business/technical/political (;)) problem you are trying to solve? from your last post the only thing I can gather is an improved MTTR, but I assume there's more to it than that...

Hey astorrs, thanks for popping on!

Now then, this is a good point. 1280 x 1024 resolution typically on all monitors. And some stations have between 3/4 monitors (nvidia quadro cards on some stations). Some might have 1-2.

We have cat6 cabling running from comms room to trading area, no data centre space specifically for the traders as of yet, we can definitely suggest this option. They are not shy of spending money on leased lines, we have 2x 10mb leased lines for them currently anyway and several backup ones.

Well obviously our ultimate goal is to get an environment in place that the traders can work from problems free, minimal downtime in an emergency, easy to administer (this is more of a request for us, as we will be the admins).

Cheers!

eMeS

Pash wrote: »

Hi Emes, thanks for your response.

One of our clients whom operates a small trading floor (20/30 traders at any one time) is rapidly expanding this year and recruiting in several more front office traders. They will more than likely be moving office to accommodate with the new influx of staff.

Our clients own FSA requirements say that a trading workstation should be down for no longer than 48 hours, but realisticly that is way too long a period resulting in huge business loss.

I agree with the 'realistic' part, but it leads me to another question...what type of trading do they do? In my experience in financial services I've yet to see any SLA with that kind of window on availability, so it seems a bit odd.

One thing you might look into is what is on the floor of the NYSE. They are called "trading turrets". The availability requirements for these are real-time. I've only known of a handful of times that these things have had major availability problems, and it's a big deal when they do. Trading turrets do all of the functions that floor traders require, and I'm certain that there are different levels of these things that can be bought.

This leads me to think more in the direction of an COTS solution for what you're describing, simply from a standpoint of what the real availability requirements likely are, as well as any liability that your company could incur from a customized solution. You really want to transfer as much of that risk as possible to a third-party (there's more risk in financial IT than we have room to discuss). Particularly when you mention the planned expansion; you really want to be careful here and ensure that you start off with a scalable solution.

Pash wrote: »

My manager has asked me to look into any virtualization products that enable streamed applications, Virtual Desktops with enterprise management features, virtual backup/storage solutions.

One of my main concerns is how to provide the trading apps on a virtualized backbone. Applications such as Reuters 3000Xtra and Bloomberg trading APP, Xtrader (from trading technologies) are all very network heavy applications, requiring constant data streaming from our information vendors.

I've almost always seen these information service type apps either delivered through a browser or through an app provided by the vendor. However, that says nothing about virtualization in that area, which you can easily do. As astorrs indicated, I'd be thinking about required resolution and network speed.

Additionally, the resolution requirements might be higher than you think. It's not uncommon for traders and broker/dealers to have multiple monitors set to very high resolution, with multiple apps running at one time. Some of the apps used are graphics-heavy to show charts, etc.. It all depends on what type of trading these guys do.

The last time I was involved in anything like that, it involved some Matrox graphics cards that could drive 4 monitors if memory serves...that was around 2003.

Pash wrote: »

We have existing blade server technology and fairly powerful HP full tower desktops. But we have very old ghosted images of these workstations, and no images at all of the newest trader workstations.

Any advice at all is much apprechiated, I have started to read about but I am very new to Virtual Desktop.

Again, I think I'd be looking at administering something that is COTS, rather than building something by piecing together technology. If I'm reading this correctly it sounds like you guys are putting the pieces together for a custom solution. If I'm wrong please correct me. However, my advice is that in financial services it's very difficult to control for all of the various forms of risk involved. One of the best ways to control for some things that you can't even predict at the moment is to look at vendors that are already providing some packaged service that does these things.

Best wishes,

MS

Pash

eMeS wrote: »

I agree with the 'realistic' part, but it leads me to another question...what type of trading do they do? In my experience in financial services I've yet to see any SLA with that kind of window on availability, so it seems a bit odd.
MS

Well these requirements are given to us by our client, they are only a small trading floor, and they only contract us for remote support (at the moment), however this will more than likely move onto onsite support very soon.

The real motives here as with any consultancy and engineering based company (which you obviously know much better than I) is for us to generate business and move onto someting which will be completely solid and have very little downtime in the event of a failure, we would like to propose something that will move our customer onto future proof technology where we can show confidence and understanding of their environment entirely.

Virtulization is simply what came to my managers mind at the time of hearing their expansion plans, and he has simply asked me to start looking at various virtual products and to see if i can find out any real world experiences with virtualization in trading environments.

They tend to use different desktops for different trading apps, so Bloomberg/Reuters workstation (which is HP branded Xeon PC) and Xtrader which we have on a blade server. We want to try and get some master images for these specific trading machines, where we can redploy in the event of a problem.

Anyway, thanks for your suggestion, i am taking all of this into mind because I will be contacting a few of our customers contacts that we have dealt with in the past and try and tempt info out of them with a few pints down the pub!

eMeS

Pash wrote: »

Well these requirements are given to us by our client, they are only a small trading floor, and they only contract us for remote support (at the moment), however this will more than likely move onto onsite support very soon.

The real motives here as with any consultancy and engineering based company (which you obviously know much better than I) is for us to generate business and move onto someting which will be completely solid and have very little downtime in the event of a failure, we would like to propose something that will move our customer onto future proof technology where we can show confidence and understanding of their environment entirely.

I'm with you....just be careful of the risk involved. Financial services organizations have a tendency of expecting a higher level of service than what was contracted. In all fairness, this shows up in all industries, however, I've often seen large financial services companies that control a lot of assets and carry a lot of weight intentionally contract for less than what is required and expect that the vendor will provide a higher level of service because they want more business with the company.

In fact, at one point in my career I used to regularly beat vendors with that stick.

Pash wrote: »

Virtulization is simply what came to my managers mind at the time of hearing their expansion plans, and he has simply asked me to start looking at various virtual products and to see if i can find out any real world experiences with virtualization in trading environments.

I think virtualization will play some role in the solution, based on what you've told us.

Pash wrote: »

They tend to use different desktops for different trading apps, so Bloomberg/Reuters workstation (which is HP branded Xeon PC) and Xtrader which we have on a blade server. We want to try and get some master images for these specific trading machines, where we can redploy in the event of a problem.

Good move...get control of what they already have in place before you do anything.

Pash wrote: »

Anyway, thanks for your suggestion, i am taking all of this into mind because I will be contacting a few of our customers contacts that we have dealt with in the past and try and tempt info out of them with a few pints down the pub!

You're welcome.

MS