In fortified data center, NYSE runs 'gated' trading cloud

31.08.2011
LAS VEGAS - Hurricane Irene mattered not to NYSE Euronext's large data center, which is built on land high enough to avoid 100-year floods and just about everything else.

This 400,000-square foot data center, completed a year ago, is located in Mahwah, New Jersey, and is a fortress designed to look ordinary. In a photo, shown on a screen here at , it appeared like a corporate campus office building. Inside are 100,000 square feet of raised floor space.

The is surrounded by water, a river on one side and a moat around the rest of it, to prevent cars from coming in, and where cars are allowed, there are car traps.

There are bomb-sniffing dogs in use, and the building has an exoskeleton, or a building within a building, for additional protection. It has access to multiple networks and two power grids and back-up generation.

The data center plays a major role in the U.S. economy. Feargal O'Sullivan, vice president of platform development for NYSE Technologies, said the New York Stock Exchange uses this data center as well as some other markets, representing about 40% of equities and options trading in North America.

"The Internet does not go into that building," said O'Sullivan. It uses a private network instead. O'Sullivan won't talk about the , other than to say it is hardware based.