AWS Facilities in Bahrain and UAE Still Recovering from Iran War Damage

Amazon Web Services (AWS) facilities in Bahrain and the UAE are still recovering from damage caused by drone strikes during the Iran war in March. The attacks, which were part of a retaliation against U.S. and Israeli targets, resulted in physical damage to AWS infrastructure in both countries.

The damage spanned multiple availability zones in Bahrain, with AWS stating that it exceeded what their regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand. In the UAE, one of three data-hosting zones was directly struck, affecting access to resources and data hosted exclusively within that zone.

AWS has been working to restore operations for customers affected by the outages, recommending migrations to other regions where possible. The company has also notified relevant authorities in both countries and is continuing to work with them on recovery efforts.

The attacks have raised questions about the resilience of cloud infrastructure in the Gulf region, with some experts suggesting that facilities should be dispersed and built using blast-resistant materials.