Russia’s Google says nearly 3% of its data was lost after crippling Ukraine drone strikes, opens secret availability zones

Yandex, commonly referred to as Russia's Google, has communicated to its clients following extensive damage to its data centers caused by Ukrainian drone strikes. In a recent blog post, the company's cloud business boasted that it had "restored access to more than 97% of customer data," yet the details reveal a less optimistic reality - the remaining 2.84% of data cannot be restored due to critical damage to equipment.

According to The Register, this statement highlights Yandex's acknowledgment of the severe impact of the drone strikes on its infrastructure.

The ongoing attacks by Ukrainian drones have targeted multiple Yandex locations, resulting in compromised online services, including a disruption in online payment systems and heightened instances of online trolling. The company attributes the loss of the 2.84% of data to a lack of customer backups within the platform. However, users who utilized Yandex Cloud backup tools reported no data loss, underscoring the importance of having a backup strategy in place.

In response to the challenges faced, Yandex has modified its backup policy, ensuring that all virtual machines created in Yandex Cloud have the backup function enabled by default. The company's proactive steps may prove advantageous should Putin decide to end the war on Ukraine. To further enhance fault tolerance and disaster resilience, Yandex is opening a new ru-central1-f availability zone in a new location.

Currently, servers at ru-central1-f will be limited in the range of services they can offer, as the newly opened datacenter site has not disclosed specific geographic details.