I remember pulling into the parking lot at work and wondering why so many vehicles were in the public parking area. We had an employee parking lot that was controlled by an automatic gate–and the gate apparently was broken or the power was out. My mind started running down the problems we would have if the power was, in fact, out. We hosted our own data center, and without power, we probably were in a very bad place.

I should have received an e-mail notifying me if any of our Web servers were down, but if everything was down, that meant e-mail wasn't working either. The building was located in a semi-rural area, outside of redundant power grids common in urban environments. We had battery-powered backup power supplies, but their effective life was only 60 minutes or so.

My first fears were quickly confirmed. The power was out, and all network and communications gear was down. The senior executive present was trying to get the network guys to run out and purchase portable generators. We had paying customers consuming services we provided by way of the Internet. The idea, of course, was the quick purchase of a thousand dollars' worth of portable generators would get those services back online ASAP.