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.
    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.

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