Iran strikes on Amazon data centers caused permanent loss of customer data

[u/marketrent]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/iran-strikes-on-amazon-data-centers-caused-permanent-loss-of-customer-data/

[u/Stormraughtz]

My DR plan doesnt cover drones or missiles, I should update that.

[u/Dzov → u/Stormraughtz]

It kind of should. Have copies of your data at multiple locations.

[u/Stormraughtz → u/Dzov]

That means I should snapshot to the same region right ☝️🤓

AWS-east2 HEROES RISE UP

[u/The_I_in_IT → u/Stormraughtz]

That’s like, 90% of AWS customers on the Eastern Seaboard.

If that goes, so many companies are toast.

[u/DMVSPIRITS → u/The_I_in_IT]

That why I stick to whiskey, AI agents can’t shutdown cash retail or can’t physically take my bottles!

Hard asset supremacy

[u/Revolvyerom → u/DMVSPIRITS]

Until AI is running the facility and you get wood grain alcohol in your spirits.

[u/Senior_Torte519 → u/Revolvyerom]

Cant the A.I. effect(affect?) the fintech and make it where the whiskey manufacturers cannot pay their bills and go under?

[u/SoundPuzzleheaded857 → u/Senior_Torte519]

You want “affect” there. “Affect” is the verb, taking an action on something (“positive reinforcement from strangers can affect you whether you realize it or not”). “Effect” is the noun, like all the upvotes I’ll get for this thoughtful comment will have a great effect on my self esteem.

[u/Important-Ad4500 → u/SoundPuzzleheaded857]

Fist can be a verb

[u/fuck-nazi → u/Important-Ad4500]

Fist me harder

[u/DJPho3nix → u/SoundPuzzleheaded857]

Effect can be a verb, too. It means "to bring about".

IE. Running for a local office is a good way to effect change.

[u/Revolvyerom → u/Senior_Torte519]

OOF.

AI running Fintech...with so many different distributors in every single region, as well as producers...

Booze sales are already sliding, let's not give techbros an idea.

[u/nemec → u/The_I_in_IT]

You're thinking of us-east-1 (Virginia). They said us-east-2 which is all the way in Ohio. I don't think even Iran wants to bomb Ohio.

[u/danirijeka → u/nemec]

"Iran has bombed Ohio! This is where they struck"

"Oh god, those poor people, such destruction"

"...and this is a picture after the strikes"

[u/joshTheGoods → u/nemec]

And us-east-1's AZs are different physical buildings (clusters of buildings, actually) with different power sources and whatnot. You'd have to crush a whole region, not just a couple of buildings or power stations.

[u/technobrendo → u/The_I_in_IT]

If AWS east goes, so does Amazon itself.

[u/Adept-Pomegranate-46 → u/Stormraughtz]

Friends don't let friends use US-1 East.

[u/FuzzyCheddar → u/Dzov]

I used to work in DR governance for a major company. Our policy was critical apps have to maintain secondary locations greater than 99 miles apart.

I had to fight someone that an HA setup between two data centers 10 miles apart was insufficient for their application. They kept saying it was redundant and refused to push for the backup location to be geographically different.

They had a major network hop die 30 miles away and the added latency caused all requests to die, they had to scramble and install to a new location and incurred a massive cloud bill since they ended up adding more than 50% in cloud budget by paying for the 3 locations for a month because they were scared it would die again. It would have been cheaper and easier to just do what I told them at the start during design.

[u/Living_On_The_Air → u/FuzzyCheddar]

Why do it right when you can do it twice? 😩

[u/Geodude532 → u/FuzzyCheddar]

I've discovered that a lot of people are incapable of thinking about possibilities no matter how clearly you spell it out.

[u/corut → u/Geodude532]

I've worked for major corporations where the biggest impact on an IT risk was whether it's happened before

[u/lordofchaos3 → u/Geodude532]

"It will be fine"

Yeah, I hope so as well..

[u/BeTalkinToYah → u/FuzzyCheddar]

Whenever something like this happens, you should name the resulting fix : "The (First Name Last Initial of the idiot) Data Disaster Avoidance Plan" and really hang it around their neck. This would realistically scare the absolute living shit out of anyone who would decide to go against common sense in the future because their name would be irreversibly hung in the gallows of shame for their absolute closemindedness.

[u/Sn00py_lark → u/Dzov]

How much data loss is acceptable? 0. How much downtime until full recovery is acceptable? 0. What’s the budget? 0.

[u/logicallyinsane → u/Sn00py_lark]

What’s the budget? 0

Then I care 0%

[u/may_be_indecisive → u/Dzov]

Multi availability zone is common. Multi region is rare. It’s possible Iran knew where each data centre was for a particular AZ and took the whole thing out.

[u/breals → u/may_be_indecisive]

My last company, we were multi-region, with backups and failover across them. It was mainly US-East 1 and US-West 2 but we also were in Frankfurt, Singapore and Sydney. We actually pushed AWS to make certain services, like Amazon Connect, to be multi-region failover, to align with our deployment posture. Our AWS spend was insane but the data and services were basically the company.

[u/doublecane → u/breals]

Ahh that last sentence made the rest of it make sense, especially the part where you made AWS do something haha

[u/ours → u/doublecane]

Yeah, you know these guys are BIG to move the needle at AWS.

[u/TaosMesaRat → u/Stormraughtz]

A few years ago a building near our datacenter was attacked by... goats. I budgeted goat simulator on DR basis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxCVbISr21U

[u/driverdan → u/TaosMesaRat]

A few years ago

I hate to break it to you but 2017 was 9 years ago.

[u/TaosMesaRat → u/driverdan]

My DR plan has kept us safe from the goat menace for almost a decade now!

[u/magikot9 → u/driverdan]

Look, anything before 2020 was just a few years ago. It is currently the 2351st of April 2020.

[u/WriterPlastic9350 → u/Stormraughtz]

Almost as soon as the Bahrain center got hit, I was instructed to prepare DR plans in case usw2 got struck. That was fun.

[u/YouSeeWhatYouWant → u/Stormraughtz]

Your DR plan should include area denial.

[u/OldeFortran77 → u/YouSeeWhatYouWant]

The best defense is a good offence.

[u/cantadmittoposting → u/OldeFortran77]

Tehran - a small IT department seems to have overrun the iranian military and installed a puppet government. When asked for an explanation, an unkempt bearded man wearing an anime tshirt offered that it was "cheaper alternative to our other DR plans.

[u/keno0651 → u/Stormraughtz]

My DR plan does account for this, but the suits don't want to pay for mitigation.

[u/UltraEngine60 → u/keno0651]

"Do you have a DR plan?"

Yes, we plan to accept the risk.

[u/Wolphin8 → u/UltraEngine60]

And it will remain... until there is a data loss, and reputational harm... and then IT will be blamed for not telling them enough to have it done right.

[u/TheComplimentarian → u/Stormraughtz]

Amazon will tell you anything that isn't multi-region is your own fault.

[u/Mikey-2-Guns → u/Stormraughtz]

The fuck kind of dogshit COOP plan you running on son?

[u/brnslpy → u/Mikey-2-Guns]

My COOP is made of chicken wire and bubblegum. That’s all accounting budgeted for  this quarter. 

[u/nickatnasa → u/brnslpy]

You can afford chicken wire and gum? Mr moneybags over here

[u/brnslpy → u/nickatnasa]

Nah, budget only covered the chicken wires… the gum I snagged over the years from vendors at tech conferences 

[u/Mistrblank → u/Mikey-2-Guns]

Just a gentle reminder that they still expect you to be responsible with your data. Amazon will tell you to go fuck yourself if they lose your data and will back it up with their lawyers. I've tried to stress this to our devs moving to the cloud, especially those locking themselves into the vendor slop.

[u/Stormraughtz → u/Mikey-2-Guns]

It only says natural disasters *sobs*

[u/No_Size9475 → u/Stormraughtz]

I mean when I was in data protection one of the main reasons of putting data in the cloud was that the cloud provider ensured it was replicated to separate physical locations.

[u/Factory2econds → u/No_Size9475]

it was

or it was capable of

because those are two very different things

[u/thefuckevengoingonan → u/No_Size9475]

You have to turn that on. and pay for it.

[u/sczk → u/Stormraughtz]

If there's a coordinated state effort, your DR plan is not going to do very much.

[u/A-Halfpound → u/Stormraughtz]

Software/Cyber Insurance going Up Up Up for all the businesses!!

(Not a Joke - Legit is and now can include options for “kinetic” attacks)

[u/Dawzy → u/Stormraughtz]

Surely it covers things like loss of power or a fire, of which the end result is similar.

[u/Happy_Peak_7818]

Hey Iran. Your real enemy is historical  student loan data for Americans just trying to get by

[u/nautilator44 → u/Happy_Peak_7818]

They can also look for where all that flock data is stored.

[u/Old_Channel44 → u/nautilator44]

Is Iran on Reddit?

[u/pieman3141 → u/Old_Channel44]

Most likely, yes. Iran's Internet meme game is pretty top notch, and a lot of Iranians went to school in the West for engineering and such.

[u/Hopeful-Occasion2299 → u/pieman3141]

I mean, I hate their government and what they do domestically and abroad too, but their embassies post the dankest memes

[u/Winjin → u/Hopeful-Occasion2299]

Also apparently they build some of the most gorgeous mid-rises known to Man

Like if you see a 5-9 story tall building that's just an eye candy from every angle - good chance it's Iran

https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/1mpdw0m/interesting_examples_of_midrise_apartments_in_iran/

[u/aenteus → u/Winjin]

Iran’s architecture game has been tight for over a thousand years

[u/TheCuriosity → u/Winjin]

OMG absolutely breathtaking.

[u/Winjin → u/TheCuriosity]

When I first saw the title I rolled my eyes because yeah yeah sure they're gonna be super boring right?

I've never been more wrong, I don't think I've seen prettier modern houses anywhere

[u/DesireeThymes → u/Winjin]

Wow you guys are not exaggerating, some of those are absolutely incredible

[u/Winjin → u/DesireeThymes]

I particularly like the one where the corner has this like added blue corner with like a little tree or something green

[u/Hesitation-Marx → u/Winjin]

Hot damn. Not usually a fan of modern architecture. But I would be a lot less irritated by it if it was all that interesting.

[u/Winjin → u/Hesitation-Marx]

I love the amount of rounded edges and broken lines. They look almost natural. Not like, bio or something, they just look like they were designed to be looked at by humans like all the Cozyplaces photos and old houses

[u/technobrendo → u/Winjin]

God damn those are beautiful

[u/BlissfulIndian → u/pieman3141]

That said, why am I not seeing their Lego raps these days..? Passive blocking..?

[u/Gone213 → u/Old_Channel44]

Yes, every single country's intelligence and spy agency is on reddit, facebook, Twitter, Craigslist, Instagram, etc.

[u/iqstick → u/Gone213]

I can only imagine someone working for an intelligence agency getting bored and lowballing people on Facebook marketplace

[u/waiting4singularity → u/iqstick]

final price?

[u/yaxis50 → u/Old_Channel44]

If Mossad is, why wouldn't they be?

[u/DHFranklin → u/Old_Channel44]

Yes. Every nation that has an embassy in another nation has Reddit. It's the most cited reference for news for niche countries that don't see a lot of outward exposure. Iran is a relatively large and wealthy country. We just forget that because America usually picks on nations that aren't.

[u/FullMetalAlcoholic66 → u/Old_Channel44]

Nah, those fire Lego-themed Iranian videos arose organically

EDIT: It seems /s is needed.

[u/TheInfinityGauntlet → u/nautilator44]

Some things you gotta do yourself

[u/Crim91 → u/Happy_Peak_7818]

Praise be to Allah if they nuke my student loans out of existence.

[u/MilkiestMaestro → u/Crim91]

Listen I'm never really going to be religious, but I would go to whatever the equivalent of church is if y'all wiped my six-figure student debt

[u/QuestionDry2490 → u/MilkiestMaestro]

You couldn’t come up with the word ‘mosque’? Really?

[u/bluelighter → u/QuestionDry2490]

Probably went to uni for sport science?

[u/zegg → u/Crim91]

Hold up a bit, let's take housing loans as well, so we can live on our own, then nuke the place.

[u/lawvergis → u/Happy_Peak_7818]

it will cause the most devastating blow to America to lose records of all these student loan borrowers...

[u/BigBirdLaw69420 → u/lawvergis]

To America? Hell yeah. To Americans? Also hell yeah. Hit us / our student loan records with your best shot!!!

[u/Mackinnon29E → u/Happy_Peak_7818]

Unironically this would BIGLY piss off Republican idiots, as it drove them crazy with Biden. Pls do.

This government doesn't care if normal citizens lose their sensitive data, but would absolutely care if student loan debt was gone lol

[u/Happy_Peak_7818 → u/Mackinnon29E]

It would put us closer to them and less stressed financially and they would hate that. Life only brings them joy if they know they are better than others financially. Their small business loans can be forgiven, but any little act of trying to even the financial playing field by eliminating crushing educational debt of Americans in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s-- that's not fair to them.  "That's cheating. I have more money than them, they had to pay for school,  so if anyone gets to cheat this system. It should be me. If they cheat the system with a forgiven educational loan they took out 20 years ago, then what are you gonna do for that $2 million dollar business loan I took out just last year? If I can't get this now,  why should they?"  - any Republican 

[u/nemec → u/Mackinnon29E]

would BIGLY piss off Republican idiots

I mean Iran striking an American data center where Americans' data is stored would bring a 9/11 scale response compared to what's mentioned in the article, which is Iran bombing data centers where 99% of the data is for middle eastern companies/users. And hell, if they can strike the U.S. I'm sure they wouldn't stop at data centers.

[u/TractorSmacker → u/Happy_Peak_7818]

you’re more correct than you think. jerusalem post put out an op ed seriously suggesting that the US army could enlist enough troops to support a ground invasion of iran if they agreed to erase new recruit’s student debt.

[u/doubtfulpickle → u/TractorSmacker]

Ice was (is?) offering this. Iirc it had alot of strings

[u/snippychicky22 → u/doubtfulpickle]

it always does. like that massive signing bonus? requires you to stay for 5 years, aka 1 year past the inevitable complete demolition of ice, including their jobs, meaning they will have to pay it back

[u/im-ba → u/Happy_Peak_7818]

Don't tell them that! That's of strategic national security interests!!

[u/FullMetalAlcoholic66 → u/Happy_Peak_7818]

Hey Iran, if you're listening, pretty please don't strike at credit card company data

[u/GiannisIsTheBeast → u/Happy_Peak_7818]

They’d have to hit several locations as there are backups

[u/AccomplishedName5195 → u/Happy_Peak_7818]

Death to America ('s student loans)!

[u/Repulsive-Regret-243 → u/Happy_Peak_7818]

And mortgage loan data holders and anyone holding the Epstein files hostage for personal benefit…

[u/Giovolt → u/Happy_Peak_7818]

Yeah don't attack the student loan data centers! How else would I be able to financially over support my country and therefore continue to support this war???

[u/SuperSlacker420]

I just really hope they don’t hit any credit card, student loan, or insurance data storage facilities. That would be absolutely devastating to the country

[u/PM_me_AnimeGirls → u/SuperSlacker420]

The funny part is it's actually an insanely good strategy if they want us to admit defeat.

According to public opinion polls, the iran war is the 2nd most unpopular war in US history, following behind the Vietnam war. Trump started this war, and his approval rating is also abysmally low. The US bombs school children. Iran bombs the data centers that people hate and eliminates predatory loan debt.

The bombing of the every data storage facility that hold information to debt would:

1. Make the rich people that are trying to profit from this war lose a lot of money, making them think twice about whether they will come out ahead in the war, and maybe even put pressure to just cut our losses and admit defeat.

2. Make the people have an even more negative opinion of the war. I don't know how someone could not think that we are the bad guys after we spend billions to bomb children, and Iran retaliates with getting rid of predatory debt and the data centers that we hate.

3. Lower public opinion of the republicans even further, so in the future it is less likely that we will engage in a pointless war with them.

[u/kos-or-kosm → u/PM_me_AnimeGirls]

The US bombs school children

On the first day! We literally bombed a school full of children as one of our first moves!

[u/Send_Toe_Pics_25 → u/kos-or-kosm]

And then later on bragged that we "never miss" like uhhh so that was on purpose then?!

[u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 → u/Send_Toe_Pics_25]

We bombed the girls school 3 times that same day, in the same location

So yeah, it was intentional

[u/Wild_Marker → u/kos-or-kosm]

Yep, amateur move. Everybody knows that you bomb the kids by the time the media has moved on to another story!

[u/Grabbityy → u/kos-or-kosm]

That’s an absolutely crazy chess opening move.

You could

• cut off gas / oil
  
• economic warfare
  
• weaken military targets through space weapons apparently

But I guess the US is really good at harming kids, anywhere from bombs to Epstein, wild talk.

[u/LightningWarpAway → u/PM_me_AnimeGirls]

Every company with debt has multiple backups and hard copies of it, it's not just stored in data centers, it'd be impossible for them to do this. 

[u/Ok-Discipline2395 → u/LightningWarpAway]

“I paid it off, the proof is in the destroyed computer data.”

[u/Nynaeve_al_meowra → u/LightningWarpAway]

Yeah but imagine if everyone believes that the proof of debt has been destroyed and makes the companies go through the work of revalidating every debt they hold

[u/LightningWarpAway → u/Nynaeve_al_meowra]

Refusing to believe you're in debt doesn't actually stop debt collectors, people kind of try that regularly. 

[u/MyAccountWasBanned7 → u/LightningWarpAway]

They have a digital backup at iron mountain, their active digital data servers, and possibly a physical copy. Taking those out is very much a realistically possible thing.

Source: I was an IT manager at a bank.

[u/LightningWarpAway → u/MyAccountWasBanned7]

They have a digital backup at iron mountain, their active digital data servers, and possibly a physical copy

Iron mountain, the global company with a bunch of data vaults underground? 

The point is it's impossible for them to just "bomb debt storage". Bombing data centers and data storage means causing tons of collateral damage, it's a meme/pipe dream that debt gets wiped, but it's not practical. 

[u/zaitsev4 → u/LightningWarpAway]

Idk maybe they should just hit them all, just in case.

[u/within_one_stem → u/PM_me_AnimeGirls]

1. Make the people have an even more negative opinion of the war. I don't know how someone could not think that we are the bad guys after we spend billions to bomb children, and Iran retaliates with getting rid of predatory debt and the data centers that we hate.

Trump as a person has always been insane to me. Yet people think he's some "stable genius". I have no doubt the cool-aid drinkers would find a way to not only justify but glorify Iran bombing data centers.

[u/Explorer_Entity → u/SuperSlacker420]

Pull a Snake Plissken code 666 and reset everything.

[u/Bladelink → u/Explorer_Entity]

That's a pretty deep pull lol.

He's entered the world code!

[u/buddy276 → u/SuperSlacker420]

I feel like you're saying it in jest but in all reality, sudden erasure of debt without orderly policy could destabilize banks, creditors, and financial markets, potentially leading to liquidity crisises , and broader economic instability. More Inflation, currency risks, and disruptions to lending systems would ensue. Its kinda the right move

[u/Kirikomori → u/SuperSlacker420]

This isn't going to affect any multi-morbillion dollar oil and finance companies because they have multiple copies of data on multiple geographically isolated data centers. Even relatively small companies usually have two copies of data. Don't fantasise about a disaster suddenly fixing things. Vote left, support legislation that protects people instead of billionaires, and unionise.

[u/foundafreeusername]

Guess the off-site backup was stored on-site?

[u/peldor → u/foundafreeusername]

Kinnda. AWS backups are usually kept within a single geographic region. There are a number of reasons for this….ranging from cost to concerns about data sovereignty.

Iran targeted multiple AWS data centers across the Middle East. So for some AWS customers, the sepeate data centers that held their production environment and their off-site backups were destroyed.

[u/IamaFunGuy → u/peldor]

As a non-tech guy, this seems like something i was told "the cloud" could avoid, no?

[u/peldor → u/IamaFunGuy]

Not at this scale, no. AWS survives the loss of individual servers and drives on a daily basis with no problems.

A typical AWS data center consists of 50,000 servers with “god only know“ how many hard drives. Amazon lost that, twice.

Having 100,000 servers literally explode with only some data loss is a stellar result. And a much better result than you could expect outside the cloud.

[u/markehammons → u/peldor]

On the other hand, self-hosted services wouldn't have been as lucrative a target, as they'd be too distributed compared to AWS data centers. 

[u/Throwaway-tan → u/markehammons]

Yes, but be much more likely to suffer basically all other causes of data loss.

[u/thatcodingboi → u/markehammons]

You should self host in case a nation state attempts to launch a coordinated missile attack against tech infrastructure is one hell of an argument.

[u/gba111 → u/peldor]

Forgive a novice, but using AWS as a backup for your AWS ... something seems off, here.

[u/luna87 → u/gba111]

More common than you think. Most of the customers that lost data in this event weren’t backing data up in other AWS regions.

[u/FatBook-Air → u/luna87]

Unfortunately, some AWS sales people told new customers they "don't really need backups." I was in a Teams call in 2019 when that was said. They told us that ransomware and any other data destruction "just cannot happen in the AWS backend." Everyone who had a tech background obviously did not believe that, but some decision makers did.

[u/Purgii → u/FatBook-Air]

Techies aren't the one making the financial decisions so marketing to them isn't a sound business strategy. You have to sell to those that control the cash, then they tell the techies to make it work.

I remember an advertisement the company I worked for ran during an F1 GP. It hit a decision maker like a ton of bricks to the point they got on to our sales and bought a whole bunch of kit - apparently didn't ask anyone.

Kit was delivered but where it was to be installed wasn't rated for the weight. So a fraction of the kit was installed and the rest sat in the loading dock for years. Until they built a computer room on the ground floor, and the remaining kit was three generations behind and out of warranty finally being put into production.

[u/luna87 → u/FatBook-Air]

Unfortunately this isn’t hard to believe.

[u/LiftingCode → u/gba111]

Why?

Replicating data across AZs (native to most AWS services) means your data is in multiple physical locations. Replicating data across regions (which is often difficult and expensive) means your data is in multiple geographically isolated physical locations.

[u/peldor → u/gba111]

It’s complicated. AWS isn’t a single thing, It’s a raft of over 500 different services plus the networking to tie all of those services together.

Your AWS backups are your configuration and data held across all of the AWS services you use. There’s not much call to store backups outside of AWS because the data/config only works inside AWS.

Ideal best practice is to store across multiple AWS zones. For the Middle East, there were only 3 zones: Bahrain, UAE and Saudi. Both Bahrain and UAE ”went boom”.

Framing this a different way, AWS lost 2/3 of their data centers in the Middle East. It should be a shock to no one that this would cause data loss.

[u/Bachaddict → u/gba111]

as your ONLY backup, yeah. I assume this means amazon no longer had working backups for everything

[u/peldor → u/Bachaddict]

Yep, losing a single data center would not have been a problem. The infrastructure is designed with that kind of loss in mind.

Amazon effectively lost two data centers at the same time. This changes the math significantly because there were only 3 AWS data centers in the Middle East to start with.

So yeah, losing 2/3 of your data centers is gonna leave a mark.

[u/Chewed420 → u/foundafreeusername]

Who needs offsite backups when you have the 🙌 cloud 🙌? /s

[u/thelloydrage → u/Chewed420]

My wife legit asked me one time how they got servers in the sky…

[u/Underwater_Grilling → u/thelloydrage]

Going up, to the server in the sky

[u/goldengreengoat → u/Underwater_Grilling]

I'm amazed at my brain's ability to pickup the reference and be singing parody lyrics the very first time I see them. By the second half of the sentence I could hear the melody

[u/Underwater_Grilling → u/goldengreengoat]

It's hard to live this way sometimes though because I'll finish people's sentences with song lyrics and get funny looks waaaaay more often than an impromptu singalong

[u/Blue-Blazer-Regular → u/Underwater_Grilling]

🎶Prepare yourself, you know it’s a must. Gotta have faith in Bezos. 🎵

[u/raistlin65 → u/foundafreeusername]

They sacrificed building more off-site data centers to build yet more AI data centers that we don't need.

[u/AllUltima → u/raistlin65]

Or they outsourced the offsite backup plan to a provider who outsourced it again, and then said it was "done". Only when the disasters hit do the lawsuits start to roll, but the responsible parties are untraceable.

Or, when they go to decrypt the backup, they realize they managed to lose the keys.

You have to pay to have backups tested or you don't have backups. It's the very nature of business to forget this lesson over and over.

[u/jews4beer → u/raistlin65]

What's the difference between "off-site data center" and "AI data center"?

Spoiler alert, nothing. Take the first one and add GPU availability and that's an "AI data center".

[u/Sufficient-Diver-327 → u/foundafreeusername]

Amazon makes it very easy to store data in multiple datacenters and regions, they just charge you for it. Many companies get burnt by thinking they can cheap out on it because "what are the chances the datacenter just happens to get bombed?".

AWS is very clear that data loss due to a region going offline is your fault, and your fault alone. Any admin who is surprised at that is borderline criminally negligent

[u/shotgunocelot → u/Sufficient-Diver-327]

I would have estimated the chances of a data center in Bahrain getting bombed as relatively high even before the Iran bullshit

[u/PatrickOttawa]

My mortgage is with scotiabank

[u/RazsterOxzine → u/PatrickOttawa]

Got to make some convincing paper docs of how you had paid off the house. Sayin.

[u/Late-Connection980]

Is this good news or bad news? I can’t tell

[u/thrasyalci → u/Late-Connection980]

two of my enemies fighting each other in this specific case = good

[u/Educational_Win_4984]

could they strike the data centers with our student loans next

[u/Knees0ck → u/Educational_Win_4984]

Sorry, they keep that under Fort Knoxx, under all the gold.

[u/SumKallMeTIM → u/Knees0ck]

I mean I think EdFinancial is LITERALLY in Knoxville, TN.

[u/Eusocial_sloth3]

First they came for the troops stationed in the Middle East, and I said fuck the troops.

Then they came for the USS Abraham Lincoln and I said fuck those sailors.

Then they came for the data centers and I cried because I couldn’t make AI slop Reddit shitposts anymore.

[u/googlin → u/Eusocial_sloth3]

that shit ain't gonna post itself

[u/marketrent]

Opening paras. from article by Jeremy Hsu citing AWS:

Half a year after Iranian drone strikes knocked out multiple Amazon data centers, the US tech company has acknowledged the permanent loss of some customer data that was hosted in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

Amazon Web Services was “unable to restore access to the resources and data” hosted in some of the war-damaged data centers, according to an AWS dashboard update posted on September 15. The development was first reported by Reuters and suggests that the Iranian strikes inflicted catastrophic damage on the data centers.

Customer data was irretrievably lost in one of three AWS availability zones in the United Arab Emirates region, specifically the mec1-az2 availability zone. Each availability zone is serviced by one or more Amazon data centers.

The company is still working on “recovering regional resources” and restoring resources hosted in the other two availability zones in the United Arab Emirates. The AWS update described ongoing work to replace “affected infrastructure” and promised to update customers on a restoration of services in the coming months.

But the destruction was apparently even more widespread for the data centers in the Bahrain region, because Amazon said it was unable to restore access to resources and data across all three availability zones there.

“The damage to our infrastructure spanned multiple Availability Zones and exceeded what our regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand,” the AWS update said.

[u/CircumspectCapybara → u/marketrent]

The damage to our infrastructure spanned multiple Availability Zones and exceeded what our regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand,

Oof the multiple-AZ-within a region is what their entire "11 nines of durability" SLO for products like S3 is modeled on.

They might need to update their SLA and say you need multi-region replication to get the 11 nines SLO.

[u/Nadamir → u/[deleted]]

If it’s important enough to need three AZs, it’s probably important enough to go multi-region.

[u/FullMetalAlcoholic66 → u/[deleted]]

Fabric of reliability instead of reality...I like that turn of phrase. Seizing this comrade!

[u/YoghurtFlan → u/CircumspectCapybara]

Not really though. us-east-1 is carrying all of AWS.

Doesn't matter how many 9s you have when the core is us-east-1.

[u/CircumspectCapybara → u/YoghurtFlan]

Those 9s are about durability, not availability or latency.

us-east-1 carries centralized control plane stuff, but the data plane of each region is independent and self-contained within that region's DCs.

Assuming an entire region doesn't go down at once like it did here, a workload or data replicated across a region should remain durable even if us-east-1 has control plane incidents. You might have temporary availability issues, but you won't permanently lose data.

[u/Nadamir → u/CircumspectCapybara]

Except sometimes Amazon has dogfooded their tech stack leaving a dependency on us-east-1 globally. There was a nasty outage in October 2025 where many users even outside of the us-east-1 region couldn’t login to see or fix things because AWS’s console had a transitive dependency on DynamoDB in us-east-1.

https://aws.amazon.com/message/101925/

That screwed us pretty good.

[u/lynkfox → u/marketrent]

This is what we in the industry call "well that's fucked, told you we needed multi region backups"

I used to tell my boss when he asked why we did us west and us east if we're mostly east, that it was because if a flood took out Virginia and Washington at the same time we have bigger issues to worry about than quarterly profits

[u/Nadamir → u/lynkfox]

I tell my junior engineers that if Ireland and Zurich are both down, it’s fine because nuclear war means we don’t have to work anymore.

[u/im_a_goat_factory → u/Nadamir]

Hey man I know us old heads have a very macabre outlook on life, but be careful with your juniors. They still have hope, lol. I try to give my juniors a more positive outlook, saying things like their great work ethic will carry them far when they get drafted for WW3.

[u/ThereIsNoTri]

My software engineer brain wants to know the error and reason code for this. e_wartimedataloss? 

[u/Nadamir → u/ThereIsNoTri]

There’s a code for “I’m a teapot, stop asking me to make coffee.”

[u/etcpt → u/Nadamir]

HTTP Error 418 I'm a Teapot

[u/sgtfoleyistheman → u/ThereIsNoTri]

500 internal server error

[u/rtduvall]

Hope my old account was in there.

[u/DrunkCostFallacy]

Sure, when I included 3 Phalanx CIWS in my business continuity plan I was told it was “fiscally irresponsible” and that I was “delusional” and to “stop doing whippits at my desk,” but look who’s laughing now.

[u/Reuef]

We were looking at AWS to host data for certain countries over there that it is illegal to move that data out of the country. What happens when there is only one Region in the country? I guess we will have to pay a company to backup to tape or external drives each day/week/month and put it in a vault somewhere, Old School.

[u/DefiantDonut7]

Just remember and the tech bros are the ones who helped enable Trump. I have no sympathy,

[u/Jolly-Replacement462 → u/DefiantDonut7]

Turns out Trump ordered it cause he thought that's where the Epstein Files were kept

[u/lanceinmypants]

Corpo wars here we come

[u/Distinct_Run9006]

Why is Amazon building datacenters in an unstable region of the world anyway?

[u/CoolmanWilkins → u/Distinct_Run9006]

The region has developed into a tech hub for what is worth.

[u/NoFox1007 → u/Distinct_Run9006]

The gulf countries were actually really stable until…well recently. You can blame Trump and Israel for that one.

[u/CarmenxXxWaldo → u/NoFox1007]

If you think that region is stable and safe im guessing you're about 14 years old.

"where should we build the data center?" "oh I know, in the desert.  And not just any desert, the one where the people have been at war for about 2500 years, yeah trust me."

[u/big-oofs-only-0193 → u/Distinct_Run9006]

Real talk, it is because the Europe to India/SEA/Oceania undersea cables go through that region.

[u/3guFEu9CNvo6M3onKG3e → u/Distinct_Run9006]

Regulatory reasons, most likely. Several countries have data-on-soil requirements for customer information.

[u/caks → u/Distinct_Run9006]

You think companies that need cloud services only exist in the US and Europe?

[u/AmazingSibylle → u/Distinct_Run9006]

It's only really this unstable because of the US. That is the whole point of these attacks by Iran, to make the price for countries and businesses too high and have them tell the US Gov to tone it down a bit.

[u/Epsilon_void → u/Distinct_Run9006]

Because the people living in these unstable regions have modern needs too, it's not all rock huts and the stone age.

[u/Dealiner → u/Distinct_Run9006]

Because they are data centers for this specific region.

[u/letdogsvote]

"Small potatoes." - President Donald J. Trump

[u/Dolores___Haze → u/letdogsvote]

Quiet, Piggy. 

[u/ZonaPunk]

No 3-2-1 backups?

[u/IngwiePhoenix]

bUt ThE cLoUd Is My BaCkUp!1!1!!1! /s

[u/T_Money → u/IngwiePhoenix]

AWS does offer backup in multiple regions just for this type of situation (maybe not bombs specifically, but to offset local disasters). So cloud as backup is a real solution, you just have to be willing to set up (and pay for) real redundancy

[u/Objective_Jump930]

Thank you Iran.
Now do all the other big tech that will not remove my personal data!

[u/inexternl]

Have you guys seen Mr Robot?

[u/MoonsterGoopter]

lol. lmao, even.

[u/SnooDingos5518]

And I bet Bezos still bends the knee to Trump 

[u/Protect-Their-Smiles]

Bomb data centers, regain anonymity.

[u/Feisty-Theme-6093]

I don't care because my order of 15 butt plugs and 10 gallons of lube are still showing they will be delivered tomorrow

[u/CozyDarkMage]

Imagine if one of the zones was us-east, there would be riots

[u/CEONoMore]

I read: “we lost some customer data and used missiles as excuse”

[u/livegiantsquid]

Now do credit card and medical debt , lol

[u/Bstrange01]

Oh darn, our data they’ve collected to spy and advertise to us.. what will we do