AWS UAE Data Center Hit Amid Iran-Israel War, Regional Services Disrupted

Cloud facilities operated by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the United Arab Emirates were hit by an outage after unidentified objects struck a data centre, igniting a fire that forced authorities to cut power to two clusters. The incident disrupted services for several hours in one Availability Zone, Reuters reported.

The operator reportedly said other Availability Zones in the region were functioning normally, though localised power and connectivity issues also affected neighbouring Bahrain.

Amazon advised customers to back up critical data and shift workloads to unaffected regions while restoration efforts were underway.

The disruption occurred amid heightened regional tensions after Iran launched missile and drone strikes in retaliation for recent attacks attributed to the US and Israel. Fire crews reportedly cut power to the affected clusters while extinguishing the blaze. Around a dozen core cloud services were impacted during the outage.

Outage Impact

Financial services were among the sectors affected. Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank reportedly stated that its platforms and mobile application were unavailable amid what it described as a region-wide IT disruption, though it did not directly attribute the issue to AWS. AWS status updates indicated that full restoration would take several hours and recommended customers initiate failover procedures to other regions where possible.

According to an ET report, a confirmed strike on a major cloud provider would mark an unprecedented escalation, potentially the first instance of a major US technology firm’s data centre being taken offline by military action. Such an event could prompt multinational cloud operators to reassess expansion plans across the Gulf region.

Tech Infra in Focus

The UAE has actively sought large-scale technology investments and infrastructure projects. Recently, Microsoft has reportedly announced plans for significant investments in the country, including the deployment of advanced chips from Nvidia for regional data centres.

Beyond immediate recovery efforts, the episode reportedly highlights the geostrategic risks of concentrating critical cloud infrastructure in conflict-prone regions.

Companies reliant on single-region deployments face heightened exposure to service disruptions and data risks unless they build redundancy across multiple sovereign regions. Investigations by local authorities are ongoing as the global cloud community assesses the broader implications for regional expansion and disaster preparedness.