Amazon Web Services confirmed that drone strikes damaged two data centers in the UAE and one facility in Bahrain, disrupting key cloud services. The attacks caused structural and power infrastructure damage, impacting EC2, S3 and DynamoDB operations.
AWS Services Disrupted After Middle East Conflict Hits Infrastructure
New Delhi: The ongoing conflict in the Middle East is now impacting global tech companies. Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud unit of American tech giant Amazon, has confirmed that three of its data centers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain were damaged by drone attacks. Following these attacks, the facilities were temporarily taken offline.
According to the company, two of its data centers in the UAE were directly hit by drone attacks on Sunday morning. AWS reported on its health dashboard that "some objects" struck data centers, causing sparks and fires. A drone strike near a data center in Bahrain disrupted power and connectivity. In a later update, AWS acknowledged that these outages were caused by drone strikes related to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
According to an AWS statement, the attacks caused structural damage to buildings and disrupted power supply. In some locations, firefighting efforts also caused water damage. This has disrupted several key company services.
Popular AWS services such as EC2 (virtual server capacity), S3 (storage service), and DynamoDB (database service) are experiencing "increased error rates" and "decreased service availability." The company stated that it is working quickly to restore services, but recovery may take time due to physical damage.
AWS advised customers to back up their data or migrate workloads to other AWS regions if necessary due to the potential risk. The company also warned that instability in the Middle East could persist, making operations "uncertain."
Earlier on Monday, Amazon warned of delivery delays in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE. A notice on its website informed customers of the "extended delivery times."
This spate of drone attacks has made it clear that the impact of regional conflict has now reached digital and e-commerce infrastructure.
