Amazon Web Services Lost 3 Data Centers To Iranian Drone Strikes in UAE, Bahrain

In the midst of an existential threat to its sovereignty, the fact that Iran thought to target tech facilities - and, specifically, Amazon Web Services data centers - illustrates both the centrality of such technology to contemporary economies - and the degree of vulnerability to which such facilities and services are exposed. 

Amazon is already acknowledging that restoration will be 'prolonged' and that customers should transfer their needs to other regions. But in an interconnected world, what region is safe and to what degree are all the dependent variables similarly endangered? This will also raise additional concerns, as if more were needed, in communities facing construction of new data centers. The larger lesson is that these facilities are crucial to the functioning of the global economy, meaning that their security and defense will have to become a greater priority to their owners and those who rely on them. JL 

Annie Palmer reports in CNBC:

Amazon Web Services said late Monday two of its data centers in the United Arab Emirates and one in Bahrain were damaged by drone strikes, taking the facilities offline. The company acknowledged the outages were caused by drone strikes tied to the “ongoing conflict in the Middle East. These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to infrastructure, and required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage.” The company’s EC2 service, which provides virtual server capacity, S3 storage service and DynamoDB database service were among applications experiencing “elevated error rates and degraded availability” AWS expects restoration to be "prolonged."

Amazon said late Monday two of its data centers in the United Arab Emirates and a facility in Bahrain were damaged by drone strikes, taking the facilities offline.

The incident occurred Sunday morning, with the company posting to its AWS health dashboard at the time that “objects” hit data centers in the UAE, causing “sparks and fire.” AWS also said it was investigating power and connectivity issues at a site in Bahrain.

The company’s latest update at 7:19 p.m. EST acknowledged the outages were caused by drone strikes tied to the “ongoing conflict in the Middle East.”

“In the UAE, two of our facilities were directly struck, while in Bahrain, a drone strike in close proximity to one of our facilities caused physical impacts to our infrastructure,” AWS said. “These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage.” 

The company’s popular EC2 service, which provides virtual server capacity, S3 storage service and its DynamoDB database service were among several applications experiencing “elevated error rates and degraded availability” due to the incident.

AWS said it’s working to quickly restore service in the area, but it expects recovery to be prolonged “given the nature of the physical damage involved.” The company said it would share an update on the situation by midnight or sooner if new information becomes available.

While it repairs physical damage at the data centers, AWS said it’s also working to restore data access and service availability in the affected regions, which don’t require the facilities to be fully brought back online.

AWS warned that instability is likely to continue in the Middle East, making operations “unpredictable.”

It said customers with workloads in the area should consider taking steps to mitigate impacts from the conflict, including backing up their data or potentially migrating their workloads to other AWS regions.

Earlier on Monday, Amazon warned customers of delivery delays in the Middle East as Iran targeted the region with missiles and drones in response to U.S.-Israeli attacks.

It added notices to the top of its marketplaces in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE alerting customers of an “extended delivery time in your area