Ukraine war: Russia faces data storage bottlenecks

The war in Ukraine has been going on for almost four weeks now. Alongside the many disturbing images of human suffering, it has also revealed that one of the world’s most powerful weapons is invisible – deglobalization. With the exception of a few “rogue states,” the global community has rallied to stand up to Russia together. In the process, the author of the war of aggression has been unceremoniously excluded almost completely from the global economy. The consequences of all this are hitting Russia to an unimagined extent. This is expressed not only in rising prices, but also completely empty shelves in the supermarket. But this does not seem to be the only problem facing the Russian population. Now the largest country on earth in terms of area is also likely to run out of data storage soon.

Cutting off Russia’s business

As many IT companies are also pulling in the same direction and want to make it clear to Vladimir Putin in particular what they think of his war crimes, a systematic departure from Russia can be observed. This also includes cloud solution providers. This could lead to the country no longer having servers from Western companies available in the near future. The boycott is likely to have serious consequences for the entire economy, but also for Russia’s critical infrastructure. Corresponding information can be gathered from the Russian-based newspaper Kommersant. As the IT experts from Bleeping Computer have now reported, according to the magazine, the huge country will only have the necessary server capacity for just under two months. After that, even the last hard drive should be full. “Kommersant” bases its own statements on insider information, which is said to come directly from the Kremlin.

More and more IT companies are turning their backs on Russia

Who really thinks that the Western sanctions do not have a big impact on Russia, should take a closer look at the same. The country under the leadership of autocrat Vladimir Putin is now almost completely cut off economically from the world market. According to experts, Russia is almost on a par with North Korea. This has resulted in gigantic economic losses, which are being felt by the population in particular. And that seems to be just the beginning. Ultimately, it is probably mainly long-term burdens that are likely to grow into serious problems soon.

Western IT companies, for example, have joined forces and collectively put their withdrawal from Russia into action. Given the fact that the huge country hardly operates its own server services, this is likely to have serious consequences. This is likely to affect not only the country’s national storage sites. Moreover, private individuals, but also Russian companies, will soon no longer be able to buy data carriers like SSDs. After all, these will simply no longer be sold to Russia. To solve the problem, Russia is likely to be left with only one option.

Is Russia pulling the ripcord?

In our age of digitalization, nothing really works without suitable server technology. They form the heart of every major company and also network critical infrastructure with each other. This is no different for Russia. Accordingly, it is hardly surprising that the country is already getting to grips with the idea of using the technology left behind by the IT companies that have left the country, in the sense of expropriation. The only question is whether this can be done as easily in practice as the leadership in the Kremlin currently imagines. Major question marks remain open here.

Supergau for Russia’s businesses

Russian companies are likely to be the main ones to suffer as a result of the departure of the IT companies. After all, they are the ones who have relied primarily on Western cloud solutions. Now they have no choice but to fall back on the state server farms. This is not only costly, but also usually means a significant downgrade in disciplines such as speed and storage capacity. But government agencies are also likely to suffer as a result of the departure of cloud services. After all, it is an open secret that Russia is currently working on extensive projects around the topic of smart cities, following China’s example.

What sounds so tempting is nothing more than the creation of extensive video surveillance of the population. This technology includes, among other things, complex algorithms for recognizing faces. These consume so many memory resources that restrictions will probably be unavoidable from the government side as well. Over time, the government in the Kremlin will probably have no choice but to cut back on resources where they are presumably not needed. This will probably start with a restricted streaming service for private individuals and continue with a restriction of server capacities for “insignificant” companies.