CME data center operator admits to operational violations, causing last week's trading interruption

On December 7, last Friday, multiple markets under the world’s second largest derivatives exchange—CME Group—experienced trading interruptions for over 10 hours due to a data center failure. Data center operator CyrusOne confirmed this Saturday that the major outage was caused by human error. According to a CyrusOne spokesperson, on-site staff and contractors at the Aurora, Illinois data center failed to drain water from the cooling towers as required before freezing weather, resulting in the cooling system freezing and operating under excessive pressure, which led to a loss of temperature control. Although CyrusOne stated that comprehensive and decisive measures were taken to restore the cooling system, CME noted in a statement that the data center’s initial remediation efforts actually exacerbated the problem, ultimately causing multiple chillers to fail. This incident highlights CME’s significant risk from relying on a single data center. The facility was originally owned by CME and was sold to CyrusOne in 2016 with a 15-year leaseback agreement. CME stated this Saturday: We are fully aware of the serious impact this incident has had on our global clients. (Jin10)