Yandex Loses Three Data Centers: Recovery Could Take Up to Six Months

Yandex has acknowledged that three data centers destroyed in drone attacks cannot be restored quickly: deliveries of new equipment are delayed by up to six months. Because of the capacity shortfall, the company has cut features in its Disk cloud storage service and is also dealing with a wave of fraud that has grown around the outages. Hi-Tech reports this, citing RBC.

The available material leaves a lot unsaid: it does not name the sites, give their combined capacity, state the dates of the attacks, or say what share of Yandex's infrastructure is affected. Estimating the scale of the losses in percentages or racks would therefore be guesswork. Three things are confirmed: three data centers are out of action, replacing the equipment will take up to six months, and users have already felt the consequences in Disk.

Why Six Months Is a Very Long Time

A data center is not just a building. It is servers, network equipment, and power and cooling systems that have to be ordered, delivered, installed, and brought online. If deliveries stretch to six months, the lost capacity cannot be replaced quickly. All that remains is to redistribute the load among the surviving sites and decide what to sacrifice.

Storage is the most vulnerable under this kind of shortage. User files are kept with backup copies, so they take up several times more space than an account's visible size suggests. Cutting Disk features looks like an attempt to preserve basic functionality and data integrity at the expense of convenience. That is our interpretation: in the material cited, Yandex does not disclose which specific features have been disabled.

Scammers Followed the Outage

An outage at any mass-market service creates an information vacuum. Users don't know what is happening to their files and readily click on anything that promises an explanation or a quick fix. The source does not describe specific schemes. The typical toolkit is well known: emails about imminent file deletion, links for "restoring access," fake tech support, and paid "storage expansion" on third-party pages.

According to RBC, the company is fighting this urgently. It is not a simple task: fraudulent messages travel outside its infrastructure, through messengers, SMS, and third-party domains.

Key facts so far:

• Out of action: three data centers.
• Equipment delivery delay: up to six months.
• Affected service: the Disk cloud storage, with features cut.
• Side effect: a rise in fraud amid the outages.
• Source: RBC via Hi-Tech; details on the sites and capacity are not disclosed.

What Users and Companies Should Do

For individual users, the steps are simple:

• Make a local copy of important files while Disk features are limited.
• Open the service only through the official app or a verified address, not through links in emails or messengers.
• Do not enter SMS codes or passwords on pages reached through someone else's link.
• Ignore offers to "urgently restore access" for money.

Companies that keep documents and working archives in Disk should check what happens if the restrictions drag on for months. They need regular data exports, a second provider for critical files, and a recovery plan that has been tested in practice, not just a line about it in a policy document. It also helps to warn employees in advance about phishing disguised as support-service messages.

The main takeaway for the market: physical infrastructure remains the tightest bottleneck for digital services. Until the equipment arrives, Yandex will have to ration limited capacity, and users will feel it in its products. Watch the company's official announcements: they will show which features return and when.