Amazon has reportedly confirmed that its Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in Dubai and Bahrain have experienced significant disruptions following the recent Iranian attacks, and expects operations at these centers to be affected for a long time.
According to an internal memo, the affected AWS regions are reportedly completely hard down at this time, with the company turning its focus to restoring services and helping customers migrate to alternative regions.
Major operational challenges
In its internal communications, Amazon has reportedly indicated that both the Dubai and Bahrain regions still face major operational challenges. “Both of these areas are still impacted, and it should not be expected that services here will operate with the normal level of redundancy and resiliency,” the memo said.
The company has told its teams to give lower priority to these areas and instead focus on keeping the scope of services to a minimum, as well as helping customers migrate to other AWS locations. Amazon said it is actively working to free up capacity in unaffected areas to ensure continuity of services for customers.
“We are actively working to free up and reserve as much capacity as possible… and services should be limited to the minimum necessary to assist with customer migration,” the memo added. In a blog post, the company confirmed that several customers have already successfully migrated their operations to other AWS regions located around the world.
Companies like Google-Microsoft-Apple next target?
Earlier reports indicated that AWS infrastructure in Bahrain was damaged following Iranian military attacks, and local authorities took action to contain a fire at one of the company’s facilities. The country’s Home Ministry said that civil defense teams were deployed to handle the situation and ensure security at the affected site.
Amazon later acknowledged that its territory in Bahrain has been disrupted due to the ongoing conflict; In an earlier statement, the reason for the disruption was attributed to drone activities in the area.
The attack comes amid rising tensions in the Middle East, where Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have reportedly warned that US tech companies operating in the region could potentially be their targets. Reports have named companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Tesla and others as potential targets of a broader conflict.
This is at least the second incident of Amazon’s cloud infrastructure being affected since the conflict intensified; In earlier attacks, AWS centers located in UAE were also damaged. Amazon says it is working closely with local authorities, while keeping the safety of its employees and infrastructure a top priority.
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