- Cooling failure in the CME data center halted most electronic trading systems worldwide
- BrokerTec US Actives and BrokerTec EU reopened quickly; others remained offline
- Temporary coolers were deployed to maintain minimal operations during the outage response
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the largest derivatives exchange in the world, was forced to pause trading across several markets due to a cooling failure in its CyrusOne data center.
The company says a refrigeration system failure affected several refrigeration units, causing an immediate shutdown of most of its electronic trading systems.
BrokerTec US Actives and BrokerTec EU, which handle liquid US Treasuries and European Treasuries respectively, were quickly reopened, but all other systems remained offline.
Technical response and interim measures
“Due to a cooling issue in CyrusOne data centers, our markets are currently halted. Support is working to resolve the issue in the short term and will advise customers of Pre-Open details as soon as they are available,” CME said on its X account.
CME said its engineering team, along with specialist mechanical contractors, were working on site to restore full cooling capacity.
Several chillers were restarted with limited power and temporary cooling equipment was deployed to support permanent systems.
The outage occurred early in the morning after a holiday that CME suggested could limit immediate disruption to US markets.
However, Asian and European markets were expected to experience the biggest impacts as trading systems remained unavailable.
CME operates in cities including London, Kuala Lumpur and several locations in Europe.
It facilitates trading in a wide range of products, including energy, agriculture, foreign exchange, metals, cryptocurrencies and major stock indices.
Even brief disruptions can ripple across markets, creating potential disruptions in pricing and liquidity.
Automated trading systems rely on continuous uptime, making cloud hosting environments particularly sensitive to such outages.
CME has experienced electronic trading disruptions in the past, though none of this magnitude.
The reliance on a single cooling system, even in a well-designed data center, can cause serious problems for exchanges handling important financial operations.
For companies that use web hosting for trading platforms or support backend operations, similar technical errors can cause operational delays or risks of data exposure.
CME has implemented temporary solutions and trading systems are expected to resume normal operations once the permanent cooling is fully restored.
However, the event serves as a reminder of the operational vulnerabilities of the high-stakes 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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