737-304-6185Spain’s Power cut in the cloud
On April 28, 2025, a massive power outage struck Spain and Portugal, disrupting electricity supply for millions across the both countries.
The blackout began at 12:33 CEST, causing widespread failures in transportation, communications, and essential services. In Spain, 60% of power generation was lost within five seconds, leading to the disconnection from the European grid. Hospitals operated on emergency generators, and major cities like Madrid and Barcelona experienced significant disruptions.
In Portugal, Lisbon’s metro and airport operations were halted, and mobile networks were severely affected. Authorities have ruled out cyberattacks but are looking at unusual weather phenomena as causes, with investigations ongoing.
What Happens to Your AWS & Azure Services During a Power Cut?
When a major power outage hits, it’s not just your office that goes dark — it can have real consequences for your cloud infrastructure too. While providers like AWS and Azure build their data centers with multiple layers of redundancy (backup generators, multiple power feeds, etc.), it’s important to remember: disaster recovery is still your responsibility.
Here’s why it matters:
Cloud providers operate on a shared responsibility model. They promise to keep their platforms running, but protecting your specific workloads — ensuring backups, failover plans, and recovery processes — is something you need to set up.
If you lose access due to a regional power failure, here’s how proper disaster recovery planning saves you:
Failover to a second region: Set up automatic failover to another AWS or Azure region that’s not impacted.
Backup and replication: Regularly replicate your data across regions to avoid a single point of failure.
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS): Tools like Azure Site Recovery and AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery can help you spin up critical workloads elsewhere quickly.
Key takeaway:
Power cuts happen. The cloud helps, but only if you plan for the worst. Make sure your disaster recovery strategy isn’t just an afterthought — it’s what keeps your business running when everything else stops.
Need help reviewing your AWS or Azure disaster recovery setup?
Let’s talk, as getting it wrong or implementing it badly can really affect your business.