Drone strikes against the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, from Iran, have damaged three Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers. The e-commerce giant has warned customers that Middle Eastern cloud operations are now unpredictable due to what’s going on in that part of the world, highlighting the physical vulnerability of the cloud.
In particular, critical services, including EC2, S3, and DynamoDB, are facing prolonged outages due to structural and water damage. Customers will now have to choose whether to continue using unpredictable services in the Middle East and moving data to more distant, but safer jurisdictions where higher latency will be experienced.
Those feeling the effects most acutely are logistics customers in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE. Not only are these customers experiencing spotty cloud services, but Amazon has also extended parcel delivery windows, indicating a breakdown in the supply chain.
The damage to the facilities goes beyond the first explosions. AWS reports that the fire suppression systems caused secondary water damage to sensitive server hardware. Interestingly, after the incident, Amazon’s internal health dashboard used quite a sanitized term, “objects”, to describe the strikes before later confirming that it had been attacked by drones.
Iran likely sees the data centers as high-value military targets that they can attack to disrupt the operations of Israel, which is known for its technical prowess, regularly using cyberattacks against Iran to slow down its nuclear ambitions. Other targets Iran has picked out include airports and refineries, as well as American military bases in Middle Eastern countries.
Amazon says it is working quickly to restore services, but the physical damage and the ongoing conflict will prolong the process.
If your organization is hosting data in the Middle East with any cloud provider, then it might be a good idea to migrate it to a different region to ensure it doesn’t come under fire from drones and missiles, at least while the fighting continues.