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AWS stops billing Middle East cloud customers as repairs to war damage drag on
- nerdsniper 5mo agoI'm surprised this reportedly only affected 19 server racks. Some of the small FPV quadcopter strikes I've seen videos of have collapsed entire homes. Even if the structure is more resilient than a fragile home, I would have expected the blast from a larger long-range drone like a Shahed to damage more server racks than that.
- downrightmike 5mo agoThe sheer amount of metal on every rack makes DCs very dense
- bluegatty 5mo agoIt's either 100lb or 100Kg, with a direct hit on a dense centre, it would damage a lot of racks, but if it's oblique, or indirect, impartial, the damage could be less pronounced. They could also be misrepresenting by diminishing the damage as there's a lot of information suppression going on.
- cnst 5mo agoI think during the OVH fire, it was the smoke damage that was deemed to have damaged a lot of the servers. Fans and cooling might be affected by all the debris. Spinning rust drives often have breathing holes, too.
- readams 5mo agoYea it's hard to reconcile such a small number of affected racks with such a widespread impact though, so this must not be the whole story. They're talking about a half a year to restore the data center. It must be more than a roof repair and 19 racks.
- righthand 5mo ago[flagged]
- time0ut 5mo agoData centers are such great targets in modern warfare. A few cheap drones can inflict billions in damage with low direct casualties (if the attacker even cares). I have heard AWS in particular is secretive about the exact location of their data centers, but no doubt every major country knows exactly where they are.
- cute_boi 5mo agoI wonder if you can uncover where the data center is just by using ping command.
- fragmede 5mo agoThat's some of how geolocation works. Ping can't go faster than the speed of light, so that gives you a circle for where something is. Ping from enough places and you can get a good enough idea, if you're the Iranian Guard or otherwise.
- sophacles 5mo agoYou can find data centers by looking for hvac units in satellite photos.
- Ekaros 5mo agoProbably also grid connections like size of transformers and if there is prominent number of trucks going in and out.
- jmalicki 5mo agoThe relative lack of trucks is what would identify the data center. The only other buildings like that are warehouses, which have a lot more trucks going in and out relatively speaking.
- hnlmorg 5mo agoIn rural areas maybe. But plenty of data centres are in cities too. And European cities are not generally known for an abundance of parking spaces.
- HotGarbage 5mo ago[flagged]
- logickkk1 5mo ago"Stops billing" makes it sound generous. If those regions can't run customer apps, not charging for them is just the minimum.
- pwarner 5mo agoIDK your S3 data may be fine, they're still incurring the cost to store it on those drives - even if they're buried in rubble /s
- jabiko 5mo agoAlso you have to remember the basics of statuspage messages: Its always just elevated error rates. Even when the error rate is elevated to 100%. "We are observing elevated error rates when accessing objects stored in the affected region. Impacted customers may experience increased latency or intermittent failures while retrieving debris adjacent data." /s
- essefjo 5mo agoThere is already a S3 storage class for that: Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive
- juliusceasar 5mo ago[flagged]
- 2ndorderthought 5mo agoIt had to have been cheaper to just pay more in taxes then this outcome.
- neuroelectron 5mo agoNot if you're rich and own representatives.
- snickerbockers 5mo ago[dead]
- neuroelectron 5mo agoWhen I was working at AWS, which was a new service at the time, the example we often heard was a natural disaster or comet strike; would be what we were making our data centers redundant for. I don't think we were ever considered to be targeted during war and I'm sure they considered that they just didn't want to that affect that morale cost on the staff.
- jiggawatts 5mo agoThree availability zones provides no protection against three ballistic missiles. Region pairs are similarly totally ineffective against a mere six rockets. No current missile defence system is effective against ballistic warheads reentering from space at hypersonic velocities. Colocating thousands of businesses and hundreds of government agencies into a handful of hyperscale data centres is the text book definition of putting all of one’s eggs into a single basket. If Iran’s attacks were more coordinated[1] they would have taken out all zones of every Middle East AWS, Azure, and GCP region. On top of the obvious direct damage to GCC nations it could have very likely permanently damaged the reputations of public clouds, possibly causing trillions in indirect economic damage to the United States. [1] The theory is that the Iranian regime prepared for decapitation strikes by splitting their military into about thirty cells that can act independently.
- mistrial9 5mo ago> a natural disaster or comet strike or, that is what they tell you.
- debo_ 5mo ago[flagged]
- dirasieb 5mo ago[flagged]
- opengrass 5mo agoZOMG free egress!?!?
- BLKNSLVR 5mo agoAt least the war itself is over: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/01/trump-congress-war-terminated-00902681 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/01/trump-congress-war-... Now, about those fuel prices...
- wavemode 5mo agoThere is no war in U-S-Se
- aggakake 5mo agoBezos getting what he paid for
- SanjayMehta 5mo agoHow is this possible? Iran's Navy, Air Force, power plants, hospitals, colleges, universities and most importantly little girl's schools were obliterated in the first 42 minutes of Trump's war.
- BoldBrook418 5mo ago[dead]
- specproc 5mo agoPro tip for securing your servers: don't allow your government to start wars of aggression.