Amazon stuck with months of repairs after drone strikes on data centers

Amazon's cloud computing clients will experience significant delays as the tech giant works to repair data centers severely impacted by recent drone strikes in the Middle East. Two months have passed since Iranian drones targeted facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and it is now estimated that full operational recovery could stretch into several months, potentially reaching half a year. A recent update from the Amazon Web Services (AWS) dashboard indicated that service disruptions were directly linked to the ongoing conflict, rendering the UAE and Bahrain cloud regions incapable of supporting customer applications. The company has also put a halt to billing operations in these affected areas, ME-CENTRAL-1 and ME-SOUTH-1, while it focuses on restoring services. This measure follows an initial waiver of usage-related charges for March, projected to cost Amazon around $150 million. In light of the situation, AWS has strongly advised its customers to transition their resources to other cloud regions and utilize remote backups to recover any inaccessible data. Some companies, like the Dubai-based super app Careem—offering a range of services from ride-hailing to grocery delivery—have successfully resumed operations by migrating their data overnight to alternative servers. The extent of the damage became clearer through an internal document that detailed significant outages, including 14 EC2 cloud server racks that were taken offline and water damage caused by fire suppression system activations. This disruption has underscored the critical nature of the EC2 service for businesses reliant on virtual servers and scalable computing. Meanwhile, another data center operator, the London-based Pure Data Centre Group, has announced a pause on investments in the Middle East until the current conflict stabilizes. The violence, which escalated following U.S. and Israeli actions against Iran, has led to a precarious ceasefire, with ongoing naval blockades affecting the crucial Strait of Hormuz, further exacerbating global economic and energy challenges.