Damage to three Web Services facilities in the Middle East highlights the rapid growth of data centers in the region, as well as the industry’s vulnerability to conflict.
Amazon’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, stated late Monday that two of its data centers in the United Arab Emirates had been “directly hit,” while another facility in Bahrain sustained damage following a nearby drone landing.
“These strikes have led to structural damage, interrupted power supply to our infrastructure, and in certain instances necessitated fire suppression measures that caused further water damage,” AWS noted in an update on its online dashboard.
By late Tuesday, the company reported that recovery work at the UAE data centers was advancing.
Unlike prior AWS incidents involving software issues that led to widespread global outages, these physically destructive attacks seem to have caused only localized and minor disruptions.
Amazon Web Services powers numerous of the world’s most popular online services, supplying back-end cloud computing infrastructure to various government agencies, universities, and businesses.
The company recommended that customers utilizing servers in the Middle East move their operations to other regions and redirect online traffic away from the UAE and Bahrain.
“Amazon has typically set up its services such that the loss of one data center would have minimal impact on its operations,” stated Mike Chapple, an IT professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.
He explained that other data centers in the same zone can take over, and this usually occurs smoothly on a daily basis to balance workloads.
“However, losing multiple data centers within a single availability zone could lead to significant problems, as it might reach a point where there’s insufficient remaining capacity to manage all the workloads,” he added.
Amazon usually does not reveal the precise number of data centers it runs globally.
The company only states that its data centers are grouped into 39 geographic regions, including three in the Middle East that cover the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Israel.
Every AWS region is divided into a minimum of three data center availability zones, each isolated and physically separated “by a significant distance”—though all are within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of one another and linked via “ultra-low-latency networks” that minimize data transmission delays.
AWS reports that its data centers feature redundant water, power, telecom, and internet connections “to ensure we can keep operations running without interruption during an emergency.”
They also have physical security measures—such as security personnel, fences, video monitoring, and alarm systems—but these are intended to deter intruders rather than protect against missile strikes.
Chapple commented that the attacks serve as a reminder that cloud computing isn’t “magic” and “still relies on physical on-site facilities, which are susceptible to various disaster scenarios.”
He further noted that data centers operated by AWS and other providers are large facilities that are difficult to conceal.
“Any organization using services from a cloud provider in the Middle East should promptly take action to move their computing operations to other regions,” Chapple advised.