In the face of more powerful typhoons and other natural disasters, it’s good to remember that AWS has installed various contingencies to ensure that their services will continue to operate during the worst case scenarios. Here are the measures they have taken:
Availability Zones
AWS has taken pains to duplicate essential components of its services across various areas called Availability Zones. This way, if one or more happens unavailable, the others can take over operations. AWS has made it a point to keep these AZs independent—they don’t share power sources, air conditioning, and UPS. Even power sources have built-in redundancies to prevent complete failure.
You may read more about how to use multiple AZs for contingencies in the Well Architected Framework document.
Contingency Planning
AWS has numerous plans for emergencies and takes time to rehearse these efforts. These plans get updated and provisioned regularly, especially when a known threat like a hurricane is coming.
Data Transfer
In the event one needs to move large amounts of data, AWS Snowball can physically transfer up to 100TB of data.
Disaster Response
In the event that calls surge during emergencies, AWS provides a service that can pick up the slack: Amazon Connect, which can supplement call centers and provide a greater response capacity.
You may contact AWS support if you need further assistance on contingencies, and PolarSeven if you would like to set up your enterprise in the AWS cloud.