Data center operator CyrusOne bolsters cooling capacity after outage hits CME Group

Dec 1 (Reuters) – Data center operator CyrusOne has installed additional backup cooling capacity at its Aurora, Illinois, data center after a snafu last week triggered an outage at CME Group for several hours.

A cooling system failure at the data center on Friday forced CME, the world’s largest exchange operator, to suspend trading across stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies.

“CyrusOne has restored stable and secure operations at its Chicago 1 (CHI1) data center in Aurora, Illinois,” the company said in a statement on Monday. The company has also installed “additional redundancy” to the cooling systems to further enhance continuity.

Bloomberg News first reported the development on Sunday. CyrusOne did not respond to additional questions from Reuters.

CME Group sold the Aurora data center to CyrusOne in 2016.

CyrusOne, which operates more than 55 data centers in the U.S., Europe and Japan, is now owned by KKR & Co and Global Infrastructure Partners.

The outage highlighted CME Group’s significant reliance on the Aurora facility for its everyday operations and the interconnectedness of technology.

It also underscored how a global surge in power-hungry data centers, driven by outsourced storage and growing adoption of artificial intelligence-powered applications, is straining cooling systems.

(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh and Bipasha Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)