TLDR
- Drone strikes directly hit two AWS data centers in the UAE, and a strike nearby damaged a third facility in Bahrain.
- Services such as EC2, S3, and DynamoDB had higher error rates and reduced availability.
- AWS has partially restored the Management Console but says the recovery will be “prolonged” because of the physical damage.
- Amazon advised customers to move their workloads to other AWS regions in the U.S., Europe, or the Asia – Pacific.
- Following the news, AMZN stock dropped by more than 2% in pre – market trading on Tuesday.
After Amazon Web Services confirmed that drone strikes related to the Middle East conflict damaged data center facilities in the UAE and Bahrain, Amazon (AMZN) stock declined by more than 2% in Tuesday’s pre – market trading.
The strikes took place on Sunday morning local time. Initially, AWS posted on its health dashboard that “objects” had hit facilities in the UAE, resulting in “sparks and fire.”
BREAKING: Amazon Web Services has shut down its UAE data center after Iranian strikes.
The AWS site in Bahrain is also affected, causing service outages across the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
There is no information about data losses.
— Financelot (@FinanceLancelot)
By Monday evening, AWS provided a clearer explanation. Two facilities in the UAE were “directly struck,” and a site in Bahrain was taken offline after a nearby strike caused physical damage to the infrastructure.
“These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted the power supply to our infrastructure, and in some cases, required fire – suppression activities that led to additional water damage,” AWS stated.
The damage caused several key services to go offline in the affected regions. EC2 virtual servers, S3 object storage, and DynamoDB (the NoSQL database service) all reported higher error rates and reduced availability.
AWS said that DynamoDB error rates “remain high” and there has been no “significant improvement” so far. Lambda, Kinesis, and CloudWatch also “remain in a degraded state.”
The only partial success: It managed to restore its Management Console, the web dashboard that clients use to manage cloud resources. However, even this restoration is incomplete, as some pages still show error messages.
Recovery Timeline Uncertain
AWS said that the recovery will be “prolonged due to the nature of the physical damage.” Teams are still evaluating the full extent of the damage while prioritizing the safety of workers on – site.
The company said that some data access and service availability can be restored without the facilities being fully operational again, and that work has already started.
is the world’s largest cloud provider, so even a regional outage has a wide – reaching impact on customers.
The company urged customers with workloads in the Middle East to back up their data and consider migrating to other AWS regions in the U.S., Europe, or the Asia – Pacific.
AWS also warned that the ongoing instability in the Middle East could make operations in the region “unpredictable” in the future.
Wider Amazon Impact
In addition to cloud services, Amazon’s retail operations in the region were also affected. The company posted notices on its marketplaces in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE, warning of “extended delivery times in your area.”
The drone strikes occurred on the same day that Iran launched missiles and drones at Israel and U.S. – linked targets across the Gulf, in retaliation for U.S. – Israeli strikes on Iran.
Amazon confirmed in its Monday evening update that the outages were directly related to that conflict, the first time it officially linked the damage to the regional military escalation.
As of the latest update, the situation at the UAE facility “remains largely unchanged,” and teams are still working to restore the full infrastructure.
Wall Street analysts maintain a Strong Buy consensus on AMZN, with 40 Buy ratings and 3 Holds over the past three months. The average price target is $282.21, suggesting around 35% upside from current levels.
