Thread

AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran

530 points · 452 comments · berkeleyjunk

bojangleslover · 1789643246 · focus · HN ↗
I think people are overthinking this. I'm the first one to criticize AWS (I run a competitor, carolinacloud.io) but I don't think we should hold it against them when they lost data due to their hard drives being physically bombed.
1. paulddraper · 1789643470 · focus · HN ↗
  Of course not.
  The surprising thing is that multiple availability zones were bombed simultaneously.
  And to my knowledge, they haven’t even yet said 2+ AZs were compromised.
  1. TeMPOraL · 1789649517 · focus · HN ↗
    Turns out that "availability zones" in cloud parlance seem to have nothing to do with geographical availability. Apparently they're logical splits and are more about billing than anything.
    torginus · 1789651409 · focus · HN ↗
    How often does an AZ go down while the other 2 still work?
    paulddraper · 1789652028 · focus · HN ↗
    > An Availability Zone is one or more discrete data centers with separate and redundant power infrastructure, networking, and connectivity in an AWS Region. Availability Zones in a Region are meaningfully distant from each other, up to 60 miles (~100 km) to prevent correlated failures, but close enough to use synchronous replication with single-digit millisecond latency.
    > <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/aws-fault-isolation-boundaries/availability-zones.html" rel="nofollow">https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/aws-fault-iso...
    They are far enough apart that tornados, floods, and fires cannot simultaneously impact multiple.
    Game_Ender · 1789652531 · focus · HN ↗
    10s of miles is close enough that they are functionally in the same place in a military context though. The latest cheap massive wave attack drones fly hundreds of miles and hour which puts the DCs less than a minute apart by flight time. This means if you want protection against those risks you have to use multiple regions instead of, or in addition to multiple AZs.
    paulddraper · 1789655225 · focus · HN ↗
    A targeted, coordinated attack can compromise multiple AZs.
    But AFAIK AWS has only reported data loss in mec1-az2.
    Cross-AZ services like S3 should have no data loss, unless there is more damage than AWS has currently published.
    [deleted] · 1789666368 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    TeMPOraL · 1789656870 · focus · HN ↗
    Elsewhere in this threat comments mention AZ turning out in practice to be different areas of the same building, or just a matter of opinion and some config.
    throwaway173738 · 1789672712 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah that’s true of Azure and of GCP but not AWS. Azure clearly states this in their documentation. Nobody was trying to hide it from you.
2. shimman · 1789656612 · focus · HN ↗
  Why not? Why shouldn't we hold it against Amazon when they are making business deals with deeply unequal societies that rely on slave labor? This is what happens when you make deals with authoritarians. Expecting the blowback to not effect you is a child's mindset.
  1. _fat_santa · 1789657792 · focus · HN ↗
    I think that's past the point OP was making. Amazon makes some pretty impressive guarantees of data durability but those guarantees only hold up if you take their advice and replicate data to other regions.
    It's like saying "Oh this car manufacturer claimed that their cars were the safest in the industry but couldn't prevent this driver from flying through the windshield" and omitting the fact the person wasn't wearing a seatbelt.
    shimman · 1789664444 · focus · HN ↗
    No, it's more like willing to work with dictatorships across the world brings inherit risk.
    No one was forcing Amazon to make deals with oligopolies and monarchies in the middle east.
    No one was forcing Amazon to engage with US imperialism.
    Like these things have extremely large threads connecting to one another. Now AWS, along with other American big tech companies, are legitimate military targets. This is what happens when you engage in these practices. You don't get to serve the interests of US imperialism and claim you're innocent. They deliberately signed up for this, there is a long history of this in US imperialism. It's nothing new.
    Next time you don't want missiles raining down upon your data center, don't engage yourself in imperial politics. You won't be shocked next time when someone punches you in a face.

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