This describes how CME Clearing conducts regular internal and industry-wide testing.

Internal Testing

CME Clearing conducts internal fail-over testing on a monthly basis. During that testing, the CME Clearing production environment is failed over to the Disaster Recovery environment. Upon completion of the test, all connections are restored.

Industry Testing

Annually, CME Clearing participates in industry-wide testing with the FIA. As part of the FIA test, firms are instructed to connect from their DR locations to the CME Clearing DR Environment. Participants must register on the FIA website prior to the exercise. This exercise is typically held on a Saturday in October.

In preparation for the FIA test, 2 Saturday clearing connectivity test dates are offered prior to the FIA test date. If a customer would like to participate in any additional connectivity tests throughout the year, they need to contact CME Group Clearing Services.

The simulated Clearing (FIA) DR exercise allows firms to complete the following tasks by pointing their DR IP addresses to the CME Clearing DR environment:

• Access all relevant CME Clearing applications in the DR environment
• Complete an MQ ping test
• Submit PCS and Large Trader data files
• Retrieve trade register and price data file (SPAN) via DR SFTP servers
• Enter sample block trades in the DR Front-End Clearing (FEC) application