Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing arm of Amazon, said on March 2 that its data centres in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain experienced power and connectivity disruptions amid escalating regional tensions.

According to updates posted on the company’s service status page, two AWS availability zones in the UAE, clusters of one or more data centres, were left without power on March 2. 

The disruption followed retaliatory Iranian attacks targeting airports, ports and residential areas across the Gulf region.

AWS said, “electrical supplies feeding one of its UAE data centres were temporarily interrupted after objects struck the facility, causing sparks and a fire.”

The company later confirmed that a “local power issue” had affected an additional availability zone in the UAE.

An availability zone, as defined by AWS, consists of one or more physically separate data centres connected within a region but isolated from other zones to enhance resilience and reliability.

Earlier on the same day, the cloud computing division reported partial recovery in the affected UAE region. However, it advised customers to rely on services in other regions while restoration efforts continued, warning that full recovery could take several hours.

When asked whether the UAE incident was directly linked to the Iranian strikes, AWS neither confirmed nor denied a connection