"Watchdog auto-restart" is a feature most forex VPS providers advertise. Most fake it. Here's what a real watchdog does and how to spot a fake one.
What a watchdog actually monitors
A real EA watchdog runs as a background service on the VPS. It checks 4 things every 10-30 seconds:
- MT5 process health. Is `terminal64.exe` running? Has it stopped responding to Windows messages?
- Broker connection state. Is MT5 actually connected to the broker, or did the session drop?
- EA chart attachment. Are your EAs still attached to their charts? Did one detach due to a chart crash?
- Tick freshness. Is MT5 receiving fresh ticks? A "running" MT5 with stale ticks is broken.
What it does when something fails
On detection of any of the above:
- Capture the current state (open positions, pending orders, EA inputs) to a snapshot file
- Kill `terminal64.exe` cleanly (give it 5 seconds, then force kill)
- Restart MT5 with auto-login credentials
- Re-attach EAs to their charts from the snapshot
- Verify EAs are receiving ticks again
- Ping the trader via Telegram with what happened
This whole loop takes 20-45 seconds on Skyline.
Fake watchdogs vs real ones
Some VPS providers say "auto-restart" but it just means Windows scheduled task that runs every Sunday. That's not a watchdog. That's a glorified cron job.
Other providers monitor only "is MT5.exe in the process list". They miss the more subtle failures: stale ticks, broker disconnect, EA detached.
Ask any forex VPS provider: "What happens if MT5 is running but no ticks have arrived for 60 seconds?" If they say "we'd reboot the whole Windows VM", they don't have a real watchdog.
Why you need one even if you're "watching"
You sleep. You eat lunch. You're in a meeting. The market doesn't care. Sunday rollover is a notorious MT5 freeze event. NFP is another. Brexit was another. The next black swan will be another.
One missed restart during a fast-moving event can wipe a funded account or skip 30 trades on a high-frequency strategy.
What Skyline's watchdog does
- Checks all 4 conditions every 10 seconds
- Average detection-to-restart time: 35 seconds
- EA state preserved (no lost positions)
- Telegram alert with screenshot of what happened
- Dashboard log of every incident, full audit trail
This isn't unique to us · BeeksFX has something similar · but it's a generation ahead of the basic "auto-restart" most retail providers offer.