The Chicago Mercantile Exchange opened its new data centre – housing the Globex matching engine – in August, 2010. Now it’s planning to add co-location services, beginning January 29, 2012. Here’s some more information …
– The data centre is located in Aurora, IL – 40 miles west of the city.
– It is a 428,000+ square foot facility (by comparison, NYSE Euronext’s Mahwah liquidity centre is 400,000 square feet), with two 138,000 volt power sources. 92 megawatts of redundant power is available.
– Low-latency connectivity to Globex is via the internal GLink network, with all connections equidistant to provide equality of access.
– GLink is available at 1 and 10 gigabit per second connections, though inbound rate for both is limited to 1 gigabit.
– Cross connects (between trading firms and third party vendors) within the facility are allowed, and access to GPS antena for latency monitoring/time synchronisation are available.
– Some suggest that pricing will be between $15,000 and $19,000 per month for a 52U rack. Plus a $10,000 deposit per rack.
– Bulk Transport is the name given to a fibre optic connection back to the old matching and co-lo centre at 350 East Cermak Street in Chicago proper. Intercontinental Exchange is there, as is Equinix’s data centre and Telx.
– A number of third party connectivity providers are expected to connect into Aurora. The current approved list of providers comprises: AboveNet, AT&T, Hudson Fibre Network, Level 3 Communications, NTT Communications, Sidera Networks and Verizon.
– Not on the CME’s list today, Anova Technologies’ CEO Mike Persico says the company plans to provide the fastest route between Aurora and 350 East Cermak.
– Spread Networks, which operates the fastest network between 350 East Cermak and various endpoints in the NYC metro region has already stated it does not plan to link directly into Aurora.
