Yesterday, in an exceptionally ironic case of poor timing, many popular sites slapped up a "please wait" sign, prompting some to think (looking at you, Diggers) that the tubes finally broke at the hands of a lunatic admin.

What really happened is that power problems tripped up 365 Main, a data-center-away-from-home operator in San Francisco. Ironically, it may have been a "greener" power continuity system that led to yesterday's brief, if overhyped, outage.

Data Center Knowledge explains:

The 365 Main data center is supported by 10 Hitec 2.1 megawatt generators, which are tested every month. The 277,000 square foot 365 facility is partitioned into eight data center "pods," some of which remained online while others went dark.

The facility's backup systems use flywheel UPS systems - rather than batteries - to provide "ride-through" electricity to keep servers online until the diesel generator can start up and begin powering the facility. A flywheel is a spinning cylinder which generates power from kinetic energy, and continues to spin when grid power is interrupted. In most data centers, the UPS (uninterruptible power supply) system draws power from a bank of large batteries. AboveNet, the original builder/owner of the 365 Main data center, was an early adopter of flywheel UPS systems, which have recently gained attention as a "greener" alternative to batteries.

Essentially, a succession of rapid-fire outages on the local grid caused the whole system to stall just before the generators could fire up. Just another case that highlights the battle between eco-technologies (though the flywheel concept is quite old) and inefficient, yet trusted and entrenched systems.

Update: Robert Scoble calls out Valleywag for the "drunken employee" story. And that concludes our geek drama for today.