Recent Iranian drone strikes on three Amazon Web Services (AWS) facilities in the Middle East underscore the rapid expansion of data centers in the region and their vulnerability to conflict.
AWS reported on Monday that two of its data centers in the United Arab Emirates suffered direct hits, while another facility in Bahrain sustained damage when a drone landed nearby.
"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," AWS noted in a statement on its online dashboard.
By late Tuesday, recovery efforts at the UAE data centers were progressing.
Unlike previous AWS disruptions caused by software issues that led to global outages, these physical attacks seem to have caused only localized and limited disruption.
AWS provides essential cloud computing infrastructure for numerous global online services, supporting government departments, universities, and businesses worldwide. The company has advised customers using servers in the Middle East to relocate their operations to other regions and redirect online traffic away from the UAE and Bahrain.
"Amazon has generally configured its services so that the loss of a single data center would be relatively unimportant to its operations," explained Mike Chapple, an IT professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.
He noted that other data centers in the same zone can typically take over seamlessly to balance workloads. However, he warned that losing multiple data centers within an availability zone could lead to significant issues, as there might not be enough capacity to handle all the work.
Amazon usually does not reveal the exact number of data centers it operates worldwide. It only states that its data centers are distributed across 39 geographic regions, with three such regions in the Middle East, covering the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Israel.
Each AWS region consists of at least three data center availability zones. These zones are isolated and physically separated by a meaningful distance, though they are all within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of each other, connected by ultra-low-latency networks to minimize data transmission delays.
AWS emphasizes that its data centers have redundant water, power, telecom, and internet connections to ensure continuous operations in emergencies. They are equipped with physical security measures, including security guards, fences, video surveillance, and alarm systems, designed to prevent intrusions but not to protect against missile attacks.
Chapple remarked that these attacks highlight the fact that cloud computing relies on physical facilities, which are susceptible to various disaster scenarios.
He added that AWS and other operators' data centers are vast facilities that are difficult to conceal.
"Organizations using services from any cloud provider in the Middle East should immediately take steps to shift their computing to other regions," Chapple advised.
