AWS unable to restore data in Middle East data centers hit by Iran drone strikes

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced it is unable to restore data and resources within a specific availability zone in its Bahrain data center and one zone in the UAE, following drone strikes attributed to Iran in March. The cloud provider stated that after a thorough assessment, recovery of data exclusively hosted in the mec1-az2 Availability Zone is not possible, with further coverage provided by CRN.

The AWS data centers in Bahrain and the UAE were impacted by drone strikes in early March, which Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for, citing Amazon's support of the U.S. military. The strikes caused structural damage, power disruptions, and water damage from fire suppression efforts. While most customers were able to re-establish operations by restoring backups or copying accessible data to other regions, the data within the affected availability zones in Bahrain and the UAE remains inaccessible.

AWS has indicated it will provide further updates on restoration efforts in the coming months and is working on replacing affected infrastructure. This incident highlights the geopolitical risks associated with critical cloud infrastructure, even as Amazon plans significant investments in expanding its global data center footprint.

Source: CRN