Ukrainian drone attack takes out Russian datacenter

Russian cloud giant Yandex reported that one of its data centers in Sasovo was hit by a drone attack, causing a fire and rendering part of its Yandex Cloud infrastructure unavailable. Sasovo is a town situated approximately 300 kilometers southeast of Moscow. Despite Yandex's recommendation to use alternative service restoration plans, including the company's own bare metal servers, it is unlikely that service will be restored soon.

The Russian firm has not disclosed the origin of the drone attack, but Ukrainian media claim that President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that Russia has targeted Ukrainian data centers, and his administration will respond accordingly. Reuters notes that Yandex is unsure whether operations at the data center can be revived, making it the second cloud provider to suffer such losses this year, following Amazon Web Services which had to abandon its Bahrain facility after an Iranian drone strike.

The incident highlights the vulnerability of cloud providers to kinetic attacks during conflicts, as data centers are considered critical infrastructure that may be targeted directly or through their connections to energy grids and communications services. While industry experts have long advised using multiple geographically dispersed availability zones to enhance resilience, the situation in Russia is more challenging due to sanctions that limit the availability of cloud services from providers based in other countries.

With a smaller pool of local cloud operators to choose from, Russian businesses face increased risks.