IT for the investment ecosystem
Moscow Exchange is not only a multifunctional platform for trading stocks, bonds, currency, commodities and other instruments, but also a company with a developed IT infrastructure. How its fault tolerance is ensured - Sergey Shelyagin, managing director for the development of stock information and technological services of the Moscow Stock Exchange.
- What is the quality of the services that the Moscow Exchange provides to investors, bidders in different markets?
- First, the quality of services is determined by the breadth of opportunities for the exchange customers to raise capital on our site, to invest in different classes of assets, to hedge risks. Secondly, of course, the stability and uninterrupted functioning of the trading and clearing platforms of the exchange. And, finally, the time for which problems that sometimes arise in the work of any complex technological platform are eliminated.
- What are the requirements for the quality of services and the state of the IT infrastructure for the Moscow Exchange?
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- There are no formal requirements, but the exchange is the center of the country's financial infrastructure and the market has high expectations regarding the reliability, speed and throughput of our systems. According to the results of the last five years, the Moscow Exchange has an average availability indicator of 99.97%. The response time of trading and clearing platforms is 300 µs, which corresponds to the indicators of the leading stock exchanges in the world. According to the results of the last testing, the capacity of trading systems is from 38 thousand to 110 thousand transactions per second, depending on the market. All the essential IT innovations are compulsorily coordinated with the committee consisting of representatives of our clients - brokers and banks. Any exchange is a complex IT infrastructure. Moscow Exchange technologies include not only trading systems, as on most other exchanges, but also real-time clearing and risk calculation, which fundamentally complicates the software and increases the operating load on the system.
- Can the Moscow Exchange compete in its technological equipment with leading exchange platforms?
- We not only can, but also compete with them in real time for trading volumes. In particular, our share in the volume of trading in shares of listed companies in Moscow and London has increased significantly over the past few years and reached 63%. We have created a global infrastructure for connecting to the Moscow Exchange. Using various technologies, they organized a collocation of the participants' systems in the immediate vicinity of the trading systems, organized an extensive network of communication channels so that in the cities of our country, and in London, New York and Frankfurt, the exchange trading systems could be connected easily and quickly. In general, compared with other exchanges, we have a wider palette of network solutions. We take into account that many financial institutions cannot afford serious infrastructure costs, so they are widely using both Internet connections and aggregation of traffic through leading telecom operators instead of point-to-point connections. That is, we provide many opportunities for companies with any infrastructure and any budget.
- What steps have already been taken to increase the resiliency of technology platforms?
- Exchange efforts are focused on three strategic programs:
modernization of information architecture, the main element of which is the division of platforms into clearing and trading modules;
a hardware park renewal program, the purpose of which is to ensure the maximum age of server hardware is not more than three years;
the transfer of the main production infrastructure to a new DataSpace data processing center, corresponding to the level of operational stability of Uptime Institute Tier III Gold.
The Exchange makes every effort to improve the quality of a software product: a static code analysis system has been introduced, the practice of code reviews has been introduced, and the testing process has been formalized and expanded.
Methods to prevent accidental breakdowns of equipment, does not exist. But there are a number of ways to compensate for hardware failures. Most of them are implemented on the stock exchange: from fully automatic hot backup to mature manual switching processes to a backup data center.
Modern computer networks used by the exchange have the ability to automatically reconfigure depending on the state of individual elements of the network infrastructure: links, switches, routers. This year the exchange switched to a new (“flat”) network topology. Such a network allows, on the one hand, to significantly increase the capacity, and on the other, to reduce the likelihood of such phenomena as a network storm, or limit its distribution.
- How will the smooth functioning of the trading and clearing platforms of the Moscow Exchange affect their move to a new data center?
- Improving the resiliency of our IT infrastructure was one of the main goals of changing the main data center. In this sense, the DataSpace data center, which at the time of selection, in 2014, was the only commercial data center in Russia and continental Europe and the fifth in the world that passed the full certification cycle for compliance with Upier Institute’s Tier III standards, we place large hope. From November, it will become the main data center of the Moscow Stock Exchange.
- The opportunity to build your own data center by the Moscow Exchange was not considered?
- It was one of the options, but we were stopped by the need for substantial capital expenditures. There are not so many exchanges in the world that have their own data center. On the contrary, a number of exchanges from the top 30 in the technical policy prescribed that they would never build their own data center. After analyzing the situation, we came to the conclusion that it is more profitable to rent several halls in a commercial data center of a high level of reliability: this is how we will be able to manage operating costs.
- What is the new primary data center?
- We rented two halls in the DataSpace data center: one for bidders, the other to host our trading and clearing systems, each with a capacity of 360 kW, and seriously invested in their equipment. The first reviews of our Russian and foreign brokers, who have already installed their equipment in the client room, are very positive - both about the quality of the racks, about the cabling solutions, and the security systems.
- And how many Moscow Exchange customers are interested in placing their equipment in the DataSpace data center?
- The colocation service is used by over 50 clients. Among them there are small companies, and even a few students with a good mathematical base, and large brokers who make a clone of their own setup in the DataSpace data center and trade in London, and in New York, and in Hong Kong. So different customers can occupy from one unit in a rack to several racks in the machine room. At the same time, it is from clients whose equipment is located in close proximity to our trading cores, the so-called high-frequency traders, that today receive 80–90% of requests to our trading systems.
- Why do such bidders need to bring their equipment as close as possible to the technological platforms of the Moscow Exchange?
- Proximity to the servers of the exchange provides a serious gain in speed, which is very important, because with high-frequency trading, the account goes not even a million, but for microseconds, tens of microseconds. This is exactly what traders need this kind in order to obtain market data, make a decision and place an order. And our task is to provide them with this opportunity.
- Will DataSpace deal with the exploitation of the Moscow Exchange's data center?
“They solve engineering tasks defined in the Service Level Agreement (SLA): they provide uninterrupted power supply and cooling, as well as security of the facility, provide customer support services and emergency services. In turn, the Moscow Exchange has a service of engineers on duty who service the equipment directly in the server room, as well as several technical services that support the performance of our main data center at the network level, at the level of application systems and at the level of customer integration.
- In solving what strategic tasks of the Moscow Exchange should the new data center help?
- In the discussed context, the exchange has several strategic objectives. First, to promote the efficiency of our customers in the markets. The more convenient and technologically organized their access to exchange markets, the potentially greater the volume of their operations. Secondly, to attract new international investors to the Russian market, and here the quality of our IT infrastructure is one of the most important arguments.
Based on iksmedia.ru
Key indicator - stability
- What is the quality of the services that the Moscow Exchange provides to investors, bidders in different markets?
- First, the quality of services is determined by the breadth of opportunities for the exchange customers to raise capital on our site, to invest in different classes of assets, to hedge risks. Secondly, of course, the stability and uninterrupted functioning of the trading and clearing platforms of the exchange. And, finally, the time for which problems that sometimes arise in the work of any complex technological platform are eliminated.
- What are the requirements for the quality of services and the state of the IT infrastructure for the Moscow Exchange?
')
- There are no formal requirements, but the exchange is the center of the country's financial infrastructure and the market has high expectations regarding the reliability, speed and throughput of our systems. According to the results of the last five years, the Moscow Exchange has an average availability indicator of 99.97%. The response time of trading and clearing platforms is 300 µs, which corresponds to the indicators of the leading stock exchanges in the world. According to the results of the last testing, the capacity of trading systems is from 38 thousand to 110 thousand transactions per second, depending on the market. All the essential IT innovations are compulsorily coordinated with the committee consisting of representatives of our clients - brokers and banks. Any exchange is a complex IT infrastructure. Moscow Exchange technologies include not only trading systems, as on most other exchanges, but also real-time clearing and risk calculation, which fundamentally complicates the software and increases the operating load on the system.
- Can the Moscow Exchange compete in its technological equipment with leading exchange platforms?
- We not only can, but also compete with them in real time for trading volumes. In particular, our share in the volume of trading in shares of listed companies in Moscow and London has increased significantly over the past few years and reached 63%. We have created a global infrastructure for connecting to the Moscow Exchange. Using various technologies, they organized a collocation of the participants' systems in the immediate vicinity of the trading systems, organized an extensive network of communication channels so that in the cities of our country, and in London, New York and Frankfurt, the exchange trading systems could be connected easily and quickly. In general, compared with other exchanges, we have a wider palette of network solutions. We take into account that many financial institutions cannot afford serious infrastructure costs, so they are widely using both Internet connections and aggregation of traffic through leading telecom operators instead of point-to-point connections. That is, we provide many opportunities for companies with any infrastructure and any budget.
- What steps have already been taken to increase the resiliency of technology platforms?
- Exchange efforts are focused on three strategic programs:
modernization of information architecture, the main element of which is the division of platforms into clearing and trading modules;
a hardware park renewal program, the purpose of which is to ensure the maximum age of server hardware is not more than three years;
the transfer of the main production infrastructure to a new DataSpace data processing center, corresponding to the level of operational stability of Uptime Institute Tier III Gold.
The Exchange makes every effort to improve the quality of a software product: a static code analysis system has been introduced, the practice of code reviews has been introduced, and the testing process has been formalized and expanded.
Methods to prevent accidental breakdowns of equipment, does not exist. But there are a number of ways to compensate for hardware failures. Most of them are implemented on the stock exchange: from fully automatic hot backup to mature manual switching processes to a backup data center.
Modern computer networks used by the exchange have the ability to automatically reconfigure depending on the state of individual elements of the network infrastructure: links, switches, routers. This year the exchange switched to a new (“flat”) network topology. Such a network allows, on the one hand, to significantly increase the capacity, and on the other, to reduce the likelihood of such phenomena as a network storm, or limit its distribution.
“DataSpace is a reliable partner that provides a fault-tolerant and secure environment for critical IT assets of Russian and foreign companies. Every year, an increasing number of customers select external data center service providers, as this allows them to meet the increasingly stringent requirements for reliability and security and, at the same time, is more profitable from an economic and operational point of view. Moscow Exchange is one of these companies: DataSpace data center is becoming the main data processing center for trading and clearing platforms of the Moscow Exchange. We are interested in long-term partnerships and we hope that our cooperation with the Moscow Exchange will serve as an excellent example for the further development of the Russian data center market. ”
Sergey Rasskazov, President, CEO, DataSpace
To a new level of reliability
- How will the smooth functioning of the trading and clearing platforms of the Moscow Exchange affect their move to a new data center?
- Improving the resiliency of our IT infrastructure was one of the main goals of changing the main data center. In this sense, the DataSpace data center, which at the time of selection, in 2014, was the only commercial data center in Russia and continental Europe and the fifth in the world that passed the full certification cycle for compliance with Upier Institute’s Tier III standards, we place large hope. From November, it will become the main data center of the Moscow Stock Exchange.
- The opportunity to build your own data center by the Moscow Exchange was not considered?
- It was one of the options, but we were stopped by the need for substantial capital expenditures. There are not so many exchanges in the world that have their own data center. On the contrary, a number of exchanges from the top 30 in the technical policy prescribed that they would never build their own data center. After analyzing the situation, we came to the conclusion that it is more profitable to rent several halls in a commercial data center of a high level of reliability: this is how we will be able to manage operating costs.
All for customers
- What is the new primary data center?
- We rented two halls in the DataSpace data center: one for bidders, the other to host our trading and clearing systems, each with a capacity of 360 kW, and seriously invested in their equipment. The first reviews of our Russian and foreign brokers, who have already installed their equipment in the client room, are very positive - both about the quality of the racks, about the cabling solutions, and the security systems.
“Modern social and economic trends dictate an unequivocal requirement for the financial world - to promptly and flexibly offer individual sets of client services at the lowest possible cost. Data center outsourcing is an economically rational solution for the implementation of this requirement - there are no capital costs for a non-core engineering company for a FINTECH engineering asset, and outsourcing operating expenses are allocated to the cost of the entire portfolio of services. At the same time, the benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of such a partnership is very high: DataSpace provides one of the best in the industry level of service at a competitive price, physical security of the facility and the absence of legal and financial risks. ”
Oleg Pismensky, Vice President, Commercial Director, DataSpace
- And how many Moscow Exchange customers are interested in placing their equipment in the DataSpace data center?
- The colocation service is used by over 50 clients. Among them there are small companies, and even a few students with a good mathematical base, and large brokers who make a clone of their own setup in the DataSpace data center and trade in London, and in New York, and in Hong Kong. So different customers can occupy from one unit in a rack to several racks in the machine room. At the same time, it is from clients whose equipment is located in close proximity to our trading cores, the so-called high-frequency traders, that today receive 80–90% of requests to our trading systems.
- Why do such bidders need to bring their equipment as close as possible to the technological platforms of the Moscow Exchange?
- Proximity to the servers of the exchange provides a serious gain in speed, which is very important, because with high-frequency trading, the account goes not even a million, but for microseconds, tens of microseconds. This is exactly what traders need this kind in order to obtain market data, make a decision and place an order. And our task is to provide them with this opportunity.
- Will DataSpace deal with the exploitation of the Moscow Exchange's data center?
“They solve engineering tasks defined in the Service Level Agreement (SLA): they provide uninterrupted power supply and cooling, as well as security of the facility, provide customer support services and emergency services. In turn, the Moscow Exchange has a service of engineers on duty who service the equipment directly in the server room, as well as several technical services that support the performance of our main data center at the network level, at the level of application systems and at the level of customer integration.
- In solving what strategic tasks of the Moscow Exchange should the new data center help?
- In the discussed context, the exchange has several strategic objectives. First, to promote the efficiency of our customers in the markets. The more convenient and technologically organized their access to exchange markets, the potentially greater the volume of their operations. Secondly, to attract new international investors to the Russian market, and here the quality of our IT infrastructure is one of the most important arguments.
Based on iksmedia.ru
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/314348/
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