Amazon’s UAE Data Center Temporarily Shuts Down After Fire Incident; Recovery Efforts Underway

Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a temporary shutdown of its data center in the UAE after an incident involving objects striking the facility. The incident occurred at approximately 4:30 AM PST on March 1, impacting the availability zone mec1-az2, which resulted in sparks and a subsequent fire. The local fire department intervened, cutting power to the building, leading to a complete shutdown of the affected zone. AWS confirmed that other zones within the region remain operational, although restoration efforts are expected to take several hours.

Current Status of AWS Services

The AWS Health Dashboard indicates that services at the affected data center are currently marked as ‘Disrupted.’ Key services impacted include Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). The dashboard also reports increased error rates across various AWS services.

In light of ongoing regional tensions, including missile and drone strikes attributed to Iran, AWS has not confirmed any connection between the data center incident and these geopolitical events. The company emphasized that other zones in the UAE are functioning normally.

Recovery Updates

As of March 3, 8:14 AM PST, AWS provided an update on the recovery efforts for the Middle East (UAE) Region (ME-CENTRAL-1). Progress is being made across multiple workstreams, particularly for Amazon S3, where improvements in PUT and LIST availability have been observed. Newly written objects can now be retrieved successfully, although full recovery of GET operations for pre-existing data remains contingent on restoring the affected infrastructure.

Error rates for Amazon DynamoDB remain elevated, but AWS teams are focused on recovery, with expectations for improvement in the coming hours. Dependent services, including AWS Lambda, Amazon Kinesis, and Amazon CloudWatch, will also recover as foundational services stabilize.

Recommendations for Customers

AWS strongly advises customers with workloads in the Middle East to consider migrating their operations to alternate AWS Regions. Customers are encouraged to activate their disaster recovery plans, utilize remote backups stored in other regions, and adjust their applications to redirect traffic away from the affected zones. For those needing guidance on alternate regions, AWS suggests considering options in the United States, Europe, or Asia Pacific.

Timeline of Events

• March 1, 4:30 AM PST: Objects struck the data center, leading to a fire and power shutdown.
• March 1, 8:59 AM PST: AWS confirmed the localized power issue affecting mec1-az2.
• March 2, 9:13 PM PST: AWS reported incremental progress in recovery efforts for the affected zones.
• March 3, 8:14 AM PST: Continued improvements in service availability were noted.

AWS is committed to providing regular updates as recovery efforts progress. The next update is anticipated by 5:00 AM PST on March 3, or sooner if new information becomes available.

For further details, refer to the original reporting source: Times of India.

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Published on 2026-03-03 12:00:00 • By FAME Delivered News Desk