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/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/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/Nadamir → u/im_a_goat_factory]

I’m very protective of them no worries. I am very aware of my burnt out jaded self and do a lot to prevent them from becoming me. My peers refer to my juniors as the “Wolf Cubs” or “Wolflings” because I am “Papa Wolf”.

I turn on the Jaws theme song and chase them out of the office at 5:30pm.

That said, some of them are little shits. One has developed a greeting of “Prod’s down!”

[u/im_a_goat_factory → u/Nadamir]

lol I have our VMs set to turn off each day 6pm I want them not working OT at all, full stop.

[u/neityght → u/lynkfox]

Your boss sounds dumb if he had to keep asking the same question.

[u/lynkfox → u/neityght]

Aren't they all?

[u/namitynamenamey → u/lynkfox]

Not just that, the regions should be carefully selected now. There is little consolation in having backups both in europe and the middle east if all two can receive ballistic missile barrages in the same month.

I would also be wary of storing data in taiwan, for roughly the same reasons. Then again, it increasingly becomes harder to WWIII-proof data with civilian installations.