Amazon cloud suffers outage after ‘objects’ hit UAE data center

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DUBAI - Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered a disruption to its services after unidentified objects struck one of its data centers 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 4.30pm Dubai time (8.30pm Singapore time) on March 1 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 center, creating sparks and fire,” the company said, referring to regional groups of data centers.

Iran’s retaliation has

spread across the Middle East

, 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 did not have an estimated time for when power would be restored to the data center. It said other groups of data centers were not impacted by the incident and it was routing traffic away from the affected data center.

The company operates 123 such groups across 39 regions globally. BLOOMBERG