Amazon Web Services has verified that drone attacks caused substantial harm to various data centers in the Middle East, leading to significant service disruptions in its UAE and Bahrain sectors. AWS service updates revealed that two facilities in the UAE were directly hit, while a nearby drone strike in Bahrain inflicted physical damage on another facility. The strikes resulted in structural impairments, power delivery interruptions, and necessitated fire suppression measures that resulted in additional water-related harm.
In an official statement, Amazon acknowledged that due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, drone strikes had directly impacted the infrastructure in the affected regions. Presently, two out of three Availability Zones in the UAE area are still significantly affected, leading to heightened error rates for customers using various services such as EC2, S3, and DynamoDB.
AWS mentioned that the recovery process would be prolonged due to the extent of physical damage incurred. The company recommended that affected users back up critical data and transfer workloads to alternate regions, emphasizing the unpredictable nature of the broader operational environment in the Middle East. Notably, there was no mention of any employees sustaining injuries during the incidents.