Amazon cloud suffers outage after unidentified objects hit UAE data centre

By Aaron Clark

 

Amazon Web Services Inc. suffered a disruption to its services after unidentified objects struck one of its data centres in the United Arab Emirates, causing a fire.

 

While it is unclear if the incident is related to the conflict between the US and Iran, the fire broke out on the same day Iranian projectiles struck the UAE in retaliation for US and Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior officials. AWS said the incident took place around 4:30 p.m. Dubai time on Sunday and the fire department shut off power to the facility and generators as they worked to extinguish the blaze, according to a post on its Health Dashboard. 

 

“One of our Availability Zones was impacted by objects that struck the data centre, creating sparks and fire,” the company said, referring to regional groups of data centres.

 

Iran’s retaliation has spread across the West Asia, with waves of missile and drone attacks launched against US bases and allies around the region, including in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. 

 

AWS said it didn’t have an estimated time for when power would be restored to the data centre. It said other groups of data centres weren’t impacted by the incident and it was routing traffic away from the affected data centre. The company operates 123 such groups across 39 regions globally.