World’s Largest Commodities Futures Exchange Counts on Marathon for Up-to-the-Minute Pricing Information
THE COMPANY
One of the world’s largest commodities futures exchange counts on Marathon to ensure that traders and clearing members always have accurate, up-to-the-minute pricing information and order pricing confirmations
THE SITUATION
For traders on the trading floor it is critical that the exchange’s pricing information is always up on the big board and that pricing is accurate up-to-the-minute. For the clearing members (the large banks and financial service firms who place the orders) it is equally critical that they get confirmations that their positions go through at the pricing that they bid.
To protect the integrity of the system and ensure the continued confidence of the traders and clearing members, downtime is not an option for either the pricing board or trade confirmation applications.
The exchange tested a cluster-based solution from a major vendor for the pricing board application. But they found that disk failures with the cluster solution resulted in interruptions and lost data that were unacceptable given the importance of the application. They also considered and rejected proprietary hardware and replication solutions.
THE SOLUTION
The exchange initially piloted Marathon’s software for their pricing board application. They were so impressed with the software’s reliability and simplicity that they then rolled it out on over 40 servers that support their order confirmation messaging application. No scripting was required for these custom applications because Marathon’s software works with off-the-shelf Windows servers without scripting or “cluster-awareness.”
Marathon’s everRun software creates a virtual Windows environment running on two standard x86 servers, yet appearing as a single instance for all applications. If one physical server or server component fails, the pricing board or order confirmation messaging application continues to operate using the second server’s resources.
THE RESULTS
Since installing the Marathon software over three years ago, the exchange’s pricing board and trade confirmation applications have operated continuously. Traders can always see up-to-date pricing on the big boards and the large clearing members are confident that their pricing position gets through.
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