Mystery Objects Hit AWS Data Center in UAE, Knock Zone Offline
Amazon's cloud arm confirmed physical objects struck its UAE facility, forcing a power shutdown and hours-long outage.
Something slammed into an AWS data center in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, and Amazon isn't saying exactly what.
The company confirmed that objects struck the facility, knocking out its mec1-az2 availability zone. Power was temporarily shut down as a result. AWS warned customers that restoring full connectivity would take several hours.
Details remain thin. AWS hasn't clarified what the objects were or how they penetrated the facility's physical infrastructure. The incident raises uncomfortable questions about data center resilience — especially in regions where geopolitical tensions can escalate quickly.
For customers running workloads in that specific availability zone, the outage is a stark reminder: single-zone deployments are a gamble. Multi-AZ redundancy exists for exactly this kind of scenario.
AWS has not provided a timeline for a full post-incident report.