Yandex Cloud Restores 97% of Customer Data After Drone Strikes

Backups now on by default

The company said it has changed its approach to backups since the attacks. Previously, customers had to switch backup on themselves. Now it is enabled by default whenever a new virtual machine is created, and the service is available on the same terms as before. Users can opt out, but Yandex describes backup as the basic way to reduce risk in unforeseen circumstances.

Engineers are also continuing to spread Yandex Cloud's computing resources across new, independent locations in different regions of Russia. The company said the number of locations will keep growing.

What happened in October

From October 8 to 11, drone attacks damaged three Yandex data centers: in Sasovo in the Ryazan region, in Kaluga and in Vladimir. According to Interfax, the Sasovo and Vladimir facilities were shut down completely, while several modules at the Kaluga site were knocked out. The incidents disrupted Yandex's own services as well as other resources on the Russian internet.

The company previously said its Chervonenkis, Galushkin and Lyapunov supercomputers were not affected by the drone strikes.

For cloud customers the episode is a blunt reminder that provider-side redundancy does not replace their own backups. Those who relied on the platform's backup tools came through intact, while those who did not account for the entire share of permanently lost data.