Stay safe out there, overseas friends.
Posted by Geodude532@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 64 comments
Iran attacked two AWS sites in Bahrain and Dubai. I hope everyone working there are safe.
bbqwatermelon@reddit
We could make a case that remote-first prevents loss of life.
Geodude532@reddit (OP)
Remote work is banned for us, so we do work from an Alternate Work Location. It would be funny for a remote worker to be troubleshooting a connection issue until he sees his datacenter in flames on TV.
St0nywall@reddit
I wonder if this attack on Dubai will go unanswered. It's a slap to the face of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
crackanape@reddit
What can Dubai do? They have other parties fight their battles for them (see Yemen, Sudan, etc.).
MusicIsLife1122@reddit
Yemen actually helps the Iranian so they don't fight for them but against them to some degree
cplusequals@reddit
The gulf states are extremely livid at this point and have been pushing for nothing less than the complete extirpation of the IRGC. I doubt they'll do too much while the US and Israel are spear heading it, though.
St0nywall@reddit
Good point
TheGraycat@reddit
So glad we started replicating services out of region a few weeks ago
Geodude532@reddit (OP)
We haven't gone to the cloud yet and our firewall decided to shit the bed on Tuesday. Disaster recovery with users complaining they have to redo 15mins worth of work. And the firewall is still down -_-
TheLexikitty@reddit
I work night shift in IT infrastructure/sec,nowhere that would be targeted, but hot damn I hope everyone stays safe, it’s wild out there.
Geodude532@reddit (OP)
I work out at KSC so I'm fairly certain we're high on the target list if shit really hit the fan. Safer than working near those liquid oxygen tanks around the area, though.
TheLexikitty@reddit
Yeesh, yea stay safe. 💞
VFRdave@reddit
Iran attacking Amazon datacenter is not good. But US attacking elementary school (and unaliving 170 girls) and universities (yesterday) is not good either. Just sayin'
BronnOP@reddit
You don’t have to say unalive, you can say killed or murdered. We aren’t YouTubers, there are no advertisers to offend here.
Itsquantium@reddit
You'd think Iran would have a shelter in place instead of using schools to house their terrorists. Using kids as a meat shield and blaming the US is wild. Normal people would seek to protect their kids, not use them as a meat shield.
BronnOP@reddit
Let’s assume what you’ve said is entirely correct, is what happened ok?
Itsquantium@reddit
What Iran did is not okay, but it's not my job to determine what's right or wrong. Casualties happen in war. It's to be expected. Iran is using children thinking the US won't strike them. You know how many kids in Afghanistan walked up to soldiers in a public area and blew themselves up? The same people that marry young children are using them as meat shields. If you've never set foot in the middle east, you should go there to see what I mean.
BronnOP@reddit
You know for a fact I was asking if what the U.S. and Israel did is okay, but you’re being intentionally obtuse.
Geodude532@reddit (OP)
Both are a tragedy but I wanted to talk about the one relevant to us that isn't getting much attention. No clue why the US won't say it, but the elementary school wasn't intentional. I used to do the identification of targets job and this was an example of gross incompetence to identify that a prior military building was now being used for a school.
Intelligent_Title_90@reddit
Imagine you are a datacenter admin who started the job because you like computers and then your workplace gets obliterated by a missile due to a global conflict.
The conversation at home must be hilarious:
"Hey honey, how was your day?"
"Sarah, you won't fucking believe this"
Tangential_Diversion@reddit
It's even worse if you consider the workforce there. Bahrain and the UAE have an overwhelming majority migrant work force primarily from less wealthy countries in South Asia, other parts of the ME, and sometimes Africa. It's literally staffed by people in a foreign land looking for a better life.
Geodude532@reddit (OP)
That sucks to hear. I saw all the other civilian attacks on both sides get a lot of attention but the posts about Oracle and AWS were just cheers about a corporation getting what they deserved. Wanted at least share my worries with our "little" group.
Bogus1989@reddit
people are so dumb in general, and reddits even worse. they will emotionally tie themselves to everything, besides no one telling them to. reminds me of high school kids…just acting like they really care to fit in.
Geodude532@reddit (OP)
Yea, I love the hive mind that tends to be very similar to the deeply conservative blinders. Fetterman is a good example of them championing him without even realizing that he's always been middle of the road/slightly conservative.
thenewguyonreddit@reddit
Email from your boss 30 minutes after the missile:
“Hey Team, due to the recent missile strike, leadership has asked everyone to be all hands on deck for the next eight weeks. Please make sure you are arriving ready to work and understand that vacations will be limited to only what has already been approved. As a thank you, we’ll be getting Costco Pizzas delivered tomorrow. Keep up the great work and please let your manager know if you see any unfamiliar aircraft!”
wazza_the_rockdog@reddit
Hey team, don't forget the "other duties as directed" clause in your employment agreement, we'll now be rotating you all through 24x7 drone watch and intercept duties.
Radioman96p71@reddit
Update: Costco has also been bombed, food is now TBD.
Bogus1989@reddit
I would be fucking furious.
I literally joined to go fight the enemy. Or whatever I was sold.and i got my wish. Its not that simple in the end….
I chose to get out after 8 years while on a high note. otherwise id be signing a contract to indefinitely he in till 20 or early retirement.
Id be damned after a decade in IT and I found myself in the middle of all that. 😡
Geodude532@reddit (OP)
BCDR being rewritten as we speak.
thebigshoe247@reddit
Bahrain or Dubai? Not sure "Sarah" would be overly common there.
crackanape@reddit
Sara is a super common name in the Middle East.
-King-K-Rool-@reddit
Dubai is one of the most white washed cities on the planet
cplusequals@reddit
I mean, most arabs are pretty white when you take them out of the sun.
NightFire45@reddit
These countries are majority ex-pats.
Dokterrock@reddit
and yet you'd be completely incorrect
https://www.khaleejtimes.com/uae/the-baby-names-that-dubai-happens-to-loves-the-most
LameBMX@reddit
listen linda... Sarah is as common as we imagine it. just let your brain autotranslate it into whatever popular name you think it should be. im just trying to get a cupcake over here.
MotanulScotishFold@reddit
It could be worse.
You be at work when a missile obliterate your job and you...
Ancilla_Contender@reddit
An AWS building is mostly made up of temporary contractors. In those countries it’s probably that and for less pay. Only say because “Admin” was sorta laughable, it resembles being a door dasher more than anything.
RedShift9@reddit
How many people actually work at these datacenters? I'm betting not even a handful... Lots of datacenters I visited don't even have personnel on-site, everything's monitored remotely including the security cams.
Sirbo311@reddit
Years ago, we built our own on-prem DC in an existing building we bought, renovated, and moved into for our Hospital system corporate office. We had some guys from IBM contract to help us design, as we never did this before. One of the dudes had built data centers all over the world. One day, he tells us 'never have an outside wall in your data center' (meaning, have outside walls for offices, etc. Datacenter are has to have more building on all sides). He had built DC's in the Middle East, and had to plan for car bombs. Never thought I'd see the day and age we'd have to plan for this, but here we are.
Lou, you were the best. You were right in darn near every thing you told us (that I can remember at least). Hope you're safe out there, wherever you may be tonight.
Geodude532@reddit (OP)
The largest server room I've ever seen is about the size of a McDonald's and I was only responsible for 6 racks. I couldn't imagine the planning that goes into dedicated server farms and accounting for terrorist attacks on top of it? We really are getting to that point, though. Especially with the military starting to rely heavily on cloud servers. At what point are we valid targets?
Pale-Price-7156@reddit
Surprised mods are allowing this thread to go this long. It will inevitably get political.
Anyways, now more than ever...
BACK UP YOUR BACK UPS... 3-2-1... or 3-2-1-1-0... or 3-3-2-2-1-1-1-1-0-0
or something like that.
Blueberryburntpie@reddit
I remember a colleague who oversaw a datacenter contract asked what's the disaster recovery plan in the event of the datacenter on the Guam island being destroyed by a Pacific war.
The vendor representative said they couldn't calculate that risk, so therefore they didn't consider any mitigations for it.
Lupich@reddit
This is such a fucking stupid karma farming thread to begin with, politics or not.
Geodude532@reddit (OP)
Karma is pointless. I wanted to highlight something that the other posts about these strikes don't. It's a travesty when any civilian dies and I didn't want this to slip through the cracks if any of the workers there were hurt.
mynx79@reddit
I'm sorry, I know this is an awful thing happening, but as someone who has been responsible for company backups, this made me laugh out loud.
SnooEpiphanies6878@reddit
And they have set their sights on Oracle in the UAE
https://gizmodo.com/iran-says-it-hit-oracle-facilities-in-uae-2000741785
Geodude532@reddit (OP)
And while I would love to think the people could stay home and be safer, I'm sure a lot of them will be required to work or get fired.
AnomalyNexus@reddit
At risk of getting political here...think AWS in Bahrain isn't the worry. That'll get sorted out.
The real worry here is 90m+ people just experiencing literally 10k+ strikes on their turf by the US. That may read as liberation to them or it may mean inspiring decades of troubles that make 9/11 look tame
idk which it is but if someone dropped a mountain of ordnance on my doorstep I wouldn't read it positively
Geodude532@reddit (OP)
Yea, I just figured that the posts involving Oracle or AWS are mostly jokes about corporations getting what's coming. Wanted to bring a little awareness to our corner. I figured the response would be mixed.
BemusedBengal@reddit
You can be concerned for multiple groups of people at the same time; it's not mutually exclusive.
Drevicar@reddit
Sorry, but there is concurrency lock on that table.
ThatDistantStar@reddit
Blowback is coming...
brovert01@reddit
What did the computers do?!?!?
Drywesi@reddit
I mean, AWS is a USG contractor…
cryonova@reddit
Missles hit a data center and you think they are safe? What a post..
Ssakaa@reddit
IRGC have tread a pretty fine line on most of their further flung attacks through this, giving warning to evacuate areas around things like known US interests, etc, ahead of a lot of them. Between that and the fact that datacenters really aren't filled with a ton of people, and they're likely targeting the tech rather than the parts of the building where staff would congregate during normal operations... as long as the impacts were where they were meant to be, the risk to staff would be, relatively, low compared to a typical office building or the like. Actually hitting the on-prem staff in most datacenters... wouldn't amount to much. The majority are security and remote hands doing drive swaps and the like. Vital for operations... but roles you can recruit and train replacements for pretty readily. They're not upper leadership, and they're not engineers et. al. with years of institutional knowledge that would be more costly to replace.
While I can't find any mention of anything regarding the staff's wellbeing (beyond Amazon noting prioritizing staff safety in the recovery work), there's a decent amount of reason to hope they actually might have gotten through that one safely.
cplusequals@reddit
They've deliberately hit heavily populated civilian centers with cluster munitions. They absolutely are not "tread[ing] a pretty fine line."
BemusedBengal@reddit
The IRGC has given longer evacuation warnings than Israel, at least.
cplusequals@reddit
The IRGC launched missiles with cluster munitions deliberately into urban civilian areas that are designed to split apart and avoid missile defense systems without any warning whatsoever.
Israel isn't really part of the conversation, but I guess Reddit is never going to beat the allegations is it?
olhafdx@reddit
I think he was hoping that they were safe after the datacenter was hit.
mike9874@reddit
Or that they're was a warning and they got somewhere safe
BemusedBengal@reddit
There was a warning. Hopefully they heeded it.
timpkmn89@reddit
Missiles come in a wide variety of sizes and strengths