- Cooling failure at CME data center halted most e-commerce systems worldwide
- BrokerTec US Actives and BrokerTec EU quickly reopened; others stayed offline
- Temporary chillers were deployed to maintain minimal operations during the outage response.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the world’s largest derivatives exchange, was forced to suspend trading in multiple markets due to a cooling failure in its CyrusOne data center.
The company says a refrigeration plant malfunction affected several refrigeration units, leading to the immediate shutdown of most of its e-commerce systems.
BrokerTec US Actives and BrokerTec EU, which handle liquid US Treasury securities and European government bonds, respectively, were quickly reopened, but all other systems remained offline.
Technical response and temporary measures
“Due to a cooling issue in the CyrusOne data centers, our markets are currently paused. Support is working to resolve the issue in the near term and will notify clients of pre-opening details as soon as they become available,” CME said on its X account.
CME stated that its engineering teams, along with specialized mechanical contractors, were on site working to restore full cooling capacity.
Several chillers were commissioned with limited power and temporary cooling equipment was deployed to support the permanent systems.
The outage came early in the morning after a holiday, which CME said could limit immediate disruption to U.S. markets.
However, Asian and European markets were expected to suffer the most significant impacts as trading systems remained unavailable.
The CME operates in cities such as London, Kuala Lumpur and various locations in Europe.
It facilitates trading of a wide range of products, including energy, agriculture, currencies, metals, cryptocurrencies, and major stock indices.
Even brief disruptions can affect markets, creating potential disruptions to prices and liquidity.
Automated trading systems rely on continuous uptime, making cloud hosting environments particularly sensitive to such interruptions.
CME has experienced e-commerce disruptions in the past, although none of this magnitude.
Reliance on a single cooling system, even in a well-designed data center, can cause serious problems for exchanges that handle major financial operations.
For companies that use web hosting for trading platforms or support backend operations, similar technical failures could lead to operational delays or risks of data exposure.
CME has implemented temporary solutions and commercial systems are expected to resume normal operation once permanent cooling is fully restored.
However, the event serves as a reminder of operational vulnerabilities in subprime financial markets.
It also shows the importance of contingency planning and redundant infrastructure for organizations that handle trillions of dollars in daily transactions.
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