CME Group has relocated its backup data center from Chicago to New York City, Reuters reported.

The Chicago-based company is the world's largest operator of futures exchanges. Its subsidiaries include the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade and the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), among others.

CME explained to regulators that it made the move to ensure it has adequate technological resources and personnel for recovery from operational disruptions. This is the company's main backup data center for electronic trading, clearing and regulatory infrastructure, Reuters said, citing Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

CME's primary data center is located in Aurora, Illinois, about 40 miles west of Chicago. The company launched this facility in 2010.

It also uses colocation services by other data center providers to host exchange infrastructure outside of the US. Equinix, for example, hosts CME's trading platform at its Slough data center campus just outside of London.

The new backup data center is in the same building in lower Manhattan that houses the NYMEX trading floor. CME bought NYMEX in 2008.

In addition to expanding disaster recovery resources, the move increases substantially the physical distance between the primary and the backup facility.

Lower Manhattan, however, was one of the areas most severely affected by last year's Hurricane Sandy. Flooding and power outages caused many data center to shut down in the area.

Besides operating exchange infrastructure, CME, like many of its peers, offers colocation services in its data centers. Electronic trading companies place servers in close proximity to exchange servers to reduce trading latency, which provides an advantage.

Sandy has not deterred companies from wanting to open data centers in New York, one of the world's biggest business centers and network interconnection hubs.

CME's Aurora data center hosts trading match engines for all products traded on the CME Globex platforms. Its colocation services in this facility offer low-latency links to Globex as well as to partner exchanges.