AWS says drones hit two of its datacenters in UAE, urges users to move resources to different regions

Multiple Amazon Web Services (AWS) availability zones in the Middle East are experiencing outages or degraded connectivity after objects struck a UAE facility, as Iranian retaliatory missile and drone attacks hit targets across the Gulf. The disruptions came a day after the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran. At 1251 UTC, …

[Dan 55]

Obligatory xkcd

705

But seriously, they're probably on some shitty wages if they're like these guys.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Obligatory xkcd

From the linked-to article:

>> The two American workers said the only communication they received from a supervisor during the attacks concerned a new payroll code to enter into their timesheets, which would reduce their pay. The Guardian has reviewed the message. “That’s the only or the main thing that the company is worried about,” said the first American worker, who earns about $20 per hour.

They are working for an American company, V2X. How is that any surprise to them?

>> “It almost seemed like [the Pentagon] evacuated the soldiers so if anything would happen safely, for instance, that base was hit it would be less casualties on the military standpoint,” said the second American worker. “What about us? Are we just considered casualties of war? How did they leave before us?”

Again, seriously, have they not been paying any attention to their own country?

On purely humanitarian grounds, you can feel for these guys, getting stuck in a war, but come on, why are things like that of any surprise to you?

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Obligatory xkcd

I mean I understand pecunia non olet, but working ultimately for Russian asset and Epstein files phobe is like asking for it?

[Roland6]

Re: Obligatory xkcd

modern America, protect the military: it is the UK government who are taking steps to get its nationals out of the War zone the US has created, Trump on the other hand has just told Americans they need to get themselves out of the war zone…

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Obligatory xkcd

Yesterday Trump said that if you even threaten US citizens anywhere in the world then he'll send the military in and kill you. Why, therefore, would he need to have made an evacuation plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Obligatory xkcd

He needs to evacuate himself from the White House, but he can't evacuate himself from The Files.

[Judge Mental]

Re: Obligatory xkcd

Seems like an invitation to me.

[Michael Strorm]

Re: Obligatory xkcd

> "a worker from India [..] said their base salary is $493 per month, with total pay typically reaching about $819 based on 72 hours of work per week."

This person is from India, so it's not clear whether that represents what the Americans are being paid, but...

> " the first American worker, who earns about $20 per hour."

...yeah, by American standards that's incredibly low for someone moving to and living in a foreign country, something most people doing that type of job would, I assume, only be doing for the money in the first place.

> "We are stuck here and treated like we are expendable."

Now you're learning.

[MaChatma CoatGPT 2.0]

Can someone clarify this for me?

Uncle Sam, and maybe others, thought that it was a good idea to have some kind AI-based war machine hosted in unhardened data centres a few kilometres across the Strait of Hormuz from their missile-equipped enemy?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Can someone clarify this for me?

Presumably a cunning plan to distract kinetic attention from all the oil and gas facilities that the region is famed for ?

[David Hicklin]

Re: Can someone clarify this for me?

I doubt the Arab states were expecting to be in the firing line like they are although I suspect that a lot of this is collateral damage from drones either missing the target or more likely being shot down (and they have to come down somewhere).

[Cris E]

Re: Can someone clarify this for me?

>>I doubt the Arab states were expecting to be in the firing line like they are although I suspect that a lot of this is collateral damage from drones either missing the target or more likely being shot down (and they have to come down somewhere). <<

The world has been changing, and just assuming that Iran won't ever hurt another Arab nation has been getting less and less true over the past decade. They lashed out directly at American facilities regardless of what countries they were located in without any apologies. The rules have changed, and those immediate retaliation targets were likely chosen before the leadership was killed. Chaos is coming to the Gulf and thinking that AMZ or GOOG are somehow above all this is an amazing denial of reality.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Can someone clarify this for me?

> The world has been changing, and just assuming that Iran won't ever hurt another Arab nation has been getting less and less true over the past decade.

Iranians are not Arabs.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Can someone clarify this for me?

Added to which Saudi Arabia has been at war with them, through various proxies, since the 90s

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Can someone clarify this for me?

And Shia and Sunni regard each other as heretics.

Still, I don't think that is the explanation here. The US is still a net importer of oil. Therefore, the Straits of Hormuz can't stay shut for long, but will stay shut as long as the current Iranian regime survives. Therefore it won't. So everyone in the Iranian leadership is basically a dead man walking. So they've nothing to lose and martyrdom starts to look like the rational response.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Can someone clarify this for me?

>And Shia and Sunni regard each other as heretics.

Not just that, the Saudis are an extreme form of Sunni and are trying to walk a line of "you must strictly adhere to our religious law. But the country should also be run by a monarch and playboy princes not vicars"

The USA has got a bit trickier. It used to be that there was a balance in US foreign policy between the competing interests of the defense companies and the oil companies, or later between the industrials and silicon valley

Now US policy is whatever the Great Leader last tweeted, which might be who he last spoke to, what he last saw on Fox, or what the voices are telling him. I miss the days of a military-industrial complex and backroom deals

[Snake]

Re: Can someone clarify this for me?

This is, of course, the same Uncle Sam that also wants to start the development of Skynet (Anthropic AI controversy) but thinks that it's all OK as long as they believe in AI guardrail pixiedust. Whilst the moronic mainstream media can't actually use the word "Skynet" to get the point across.

Morons leading morons, voted in by inbred imbeciles that are OK with things as long as they believe it's coming from the 'right' side. Just had a talk with my conservative-leaning boss just 20 minutes ago, who is OK leaving his home unlocked and being on AI security cameras because "What do I have to hide?!" - but if it were the liberals forwarding this crap, he would probably be up in arms.

World burning? I'm ready to throw the gasoline on to help. It's Dead, Jim.

[vekkq]

so much for 99.9 uptime promises.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still up, only currently it's up in smoke.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don’t really need missiles or drones, a few cans of expanding foam filler v’s an external chill unit will suffice.

[DangerWiIIRobinson]

Smoke computing you say...

Don't let marketing get wind of that.

[MrBanana]

Yup, smoke computing. Just like voting for the pope - black/white smoke = binary 1/0. Not sure how you would construct a smoke based logic gate though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask Elon - he has lots of experience of smoking something

[aregross]

SoS, Different Day

Back in the day we used to call that "Vaporware"

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually the smoke will become true cloud computing

[Dan 55]

The smoke test failed.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

You know what they say: No smoke without incoming fire

[Ribfeast]

Smoke...aka perhaps in the form of "clouds"

[Martin M]

“so much for 99.9 uptime promises.”

The promises with the “force majeure” clause? I think being targeted by ballistic missiles or military drones falls squarely under that.

[elsergiovolador]

Pay

You get what you pay for. Maybe if big corporations paid taxes, there would be money for air defences.

Then think, what is more likely to be attacked by mad dictator - massive all eggs in the basket power grid and water hog or your shed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Pay

I have to ask… which mad dictator were you talking about in this scenario?

[Paul Crawford]

Re: Pay

Good point, there are so many to chose from in this situation...

[Ochib]

Re: Pay

AWS, now with option AA

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Pay

Why are we paying to evacuate our citizens who went to Dubai to avoid paying the taxes that are now being used to evacuate them ?

[Rory B Bellows]

Armed data centers

will we be seeing armed data centers in the near future? Capable of launching defensive interceptor missiles.

Was going to use Joke Alert, but now I'm not sure if I'm joking.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Armed data centers

Many facilities are already armed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Armed data centers

And Intel aren't happy about that.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Armed data centers

Armed how? You mean the security guards have pistols? Or the datacentre itself is literally armed, i.e. there is a 50MW laser turret on each corner of the roof, controlled by the AI "living" inside, ready to blast any drone, missile or meatstick that approaches it

[Aitor 1]

Re: Armed data centers

Using ARM processors.. that was the pun!

[cyberdemon]

Re: Armed data centers

My reply was to elsergio, not the Anonymous Coward (whom I did upvote for the pun)

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Armed data centers

Has Amazon any Data Centers with a moat, patrolled by sharks with lasers?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Armed data centers

Welcome to Texas

[Roland6]

Re: Armed data centers

Suspect security guards with pistols and have attended a 1 hour training session on the use of other defensive weapons that might be deployed if given sufficient notice of an attack …

[Rory B Bellows]

Re: Armed data centers

My original thought was there would be something like a building specific iron dome or patriot missile defense. It would only react if the incoming trajectory was going to impact the data center its self. A dystopian scenario where the data centers AI determines that an incoming projectile that will hit the hospital 2 blocks over is of no concern and a waste of it's own ammo. But if the data center is going to suffer a direct hit, then it reacts.

[kmorwath]

Re: Armed data centers

Well, maybe when they work, Bezos will repurpose some of its rockets. And we could see Amazon declare war on Iran....

[Snake]

Re: Armed data centers

Why does everyone think that Bezos would arm the Amazon datacenters? Aren't you adding 2 + 2? With the Pentagon signing AI services, these suppliers will [now] be listed as strategic imperatives - they will be assigned national security defense classification. And that means that the Pentagon will happily assign defense security if and when a threat level is declared against them.

In other words, why do you think that Amazon will pay for their own defense when they can get the government to do if for them?? Hello, reality calling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isnt this a little weird`

1) The purpose of data centers is that they can survive and thrive if the primary power goes (Secondary) and then diesel generators etc

2) I am guessing they facilities themselves must have been on fire - so they had to cut all power

3) So fly a drone cause a fire and services down....

Thoughts?

[munnoch]

Re: Isnt this a little weird`

Its one way to stop AI...

[richardcox13]

Re: Isnt this a little weird`

Any one DC can fail for any number of reasons[1]. A Failure of a power grid connection should not be one, but there are lots of others.[2]

If your DC provider is claiming resiliency for anything other than minor failures, the marketing/sales BS has taken over.

[1] Eg. the chemical plant next door has a failure that leads to a general evacuation...

[2] Even having two geographically (~100km) separated DCs may not be enough, because they're aligned north-south in tornado ally: it would just take one larger storm system...

[Korev]

Re: Isnt this a little weird`

> [2] Even having two geographically (~100km) separated DCs may not be enough, because they're aligned north-south in tornado ally: it would just take one larger storm system...

As two AZs have been impacted[0] I'm surprised that the Iranians and their friends aren't going for the 3rd...

[0] Pun intended

[cyberdemon]

Re: Isnt this a little weird`

> Thoughts?

My guess is the gas (LNG?) storage tanks for the on-site turbine generators would be the weakpoint

That and the HV transformers/switchgear

[doublelayer]

Re: Isnt this a little weird`

I'm not sure why you're surprised. Datacenters are generally built to withstand normal problems like power failure. Even then, depending on what's in the datacenter, they may have an acceptable reaction to those failures, for example safely shutting some things down rather than keeping everything running regardless of how long grid power's out, while other DCs do want full failover on that. They are almost never built for staying active when being fired at. If you have the ability to specifically attack them with military drones, you'll be able to do damage they aren't equipped to absorb without anything going wrong. Rather few things are built to absorb this because they usually rely on local militaries to defend them if a war breaks out and can often assume that wars won't break out because people try not to install expensive things in likely war zones.

[sindrelspecs]

Sprinklers!?

"Some of the incidents caused fires that set off datacenter sprinklers, damaging equipment."

WTF? I toured a mid-budget DC in the early 2000s and even that used FM200. Why is a high-budget modern DC in 2026 using water for fire suppression???

[Casca]

Re: Sprinklers!?

Its cheaper?

[tim 13]

Re: Sprinklers!?

Water damage could be from the local fire services, or sprinkler systems in the management offices

[paluster]

Re: Sprinklers!?

Sprinklers in the offices is the most likely scenario. Water isnt just cheap its also non toxic. When I was still working in the data centre we had a huge computer hall and as kit became smaller some of the space was repurposed as people space. They moved the Help Desk in and the sraff were seriously miffed when they realised that if the fire alarms went off for a fire in the computer hall then they only had two minutes to evacuate before the entire zone flooded with inert gas to about seven feet off the ground and nobody had told them.

[Lon24]

Re: Sprinklers!?

Inert gas is likely to be ineffective if the shell of the building has been breached by an explosion which is also the seal of the fire.

[retiredFool]

Re: Sprinklers!?

Many years ago I worked at a co that had a halon suppression system in the computer rooms. If the siren went off, you had 2 minutes to get out. They trained people on it. The co also had a fab, and I went for a tour of it once. Get all bunnied up go thru the air showers and a few moments later alarms go off. Chemical leak detected, everyone gtfo very quickly including me. Who says tech isn't dangerous.

[andy the pessimist]

Re: Sprinklers!?

FAB's have a lot of nasty chemicals. HF, pocl and phosgene (if the process is wrong). The operators will quickly leave to a safe area. The equipment engineers will be running to the equipment to fix things....hopefully.

[Quasi]

Re: Sprinklers!?

Yeah i've noticed some sprinklers in small DC's to....was told that the sprinklers are the last line of defense to safe the building.

So when the fire in the DC couldn't be contained by the equipment friendly systems they will atleast save the building...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Sprinklers!?

>was told that the sprinklers are the last line of defense to safe the building.

When the GPUs are worth 100x the cost of the shell it might be a good idea to omit the sprinklers, just in case some idiot with a forklift

[doublelayer]

Re: Sprinklers!?

If the building burns down, then the GPUs are probably not in great condition, and even if they did somehow survive, the fire brigade are not going to be worried about saving them when they try to keep that fire from taking out whatever is next door. It would take some work to make sure you only use water when the damage it's going to do is already inevitable, but it's probably still worth doing.

[A_O_Rourke]

Is this what took Amazon offline on the 27th??

Loads of people complaining they couldn't order things from the giant Tat bazaar in the cloud (including my Granddaughter!)

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Is this what took Amazon offline on the 27th??

I hope you got the Granddaughter delivered once things were restarted.

Depending on the delivery company they may have left her in a bin or thrown her over a fence

[doublelayer]

Re: Is this what took Amazon offline on the 27th??

I doubt it. The attacks didn't start until the 28th in most time zones, and retaliation took a bit longer. Amazon the store is unlikely to be hosted in or rely on the UAE and Bahrain zones unless you live in that area and possibly not even then. If Amazon was down, it was probably something else.

[retiredFool]

Bad feeling about this

I've got a very bad feeling about this whole Iran stupidity by trump. Like covid bad feeling level. When covid first started I thought, this is going to be bad, very very bad. And unfortunately worse than even I was thinking at that time.

Iran unlike Iraq and Afghanistan has a military, a real one. They already took Qatar's LNG system offline. No big deal right? Wrong. 20% of all LNG is shipped from Qatar. And now Iran is threatening to shoot at anything in the Straits. They are bombing their Middle East neighbors. And Iran has more they could do. Dirty bombs come to mind as one example. Chemical/biological weapons too. If you back a theocracy into a corner, bad things can happen, like who cares if the world ends things.

thanks dumb dumb donald. your stupidity never ceases to amaze. Please Xi, if donnie comes round for a visit, do a middle east kashoggi. Go back to the good old days where leaders often didn't come home from a state visit.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Bad feeling about this

It seems a perfectly well thought-out plan.

Stop Venezuelan, and now Iranian, oil flowing to China, forces China to buy Russian oil.

Somebody is getting a bonus from Moscow this month

[herman]

Re: Bad feeling about this

Donny has a smart weapon in this case - Israel.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Bad feeling about this

string.reverse()

[herman]

Sand

It is the Yoo Aye Eee - why waste water on fire suppression - use sand.

[Tim99]

Another reason for on-prem?

If a drone hits your in-house hardware, you probably have other problems than not being able to access your data?

[s. pam]

How will AWS deal with data residency laws in those countries?

Many middle eastern countries have stiff fines with legislation with real teeth that their data can either not reside in an offsite/cloud or must only reside at a data centre in that country.

So when the inevitble bombs start dropping from Iran what they gonna do -- call uncle orange taco for help?

[retiredFool]

Re: How will AWS deal with data residency laws in those countries?

Yeah, I keep seeing Kushner (Ivanka's cuckold) at these meetings in the ME and really everywhere around the world. He is the shadow state dept. of the US. I won't be surprised if this ends in a massive Shia/Sunni/Jewish/Christian war that spreads worldwide.