Eight to ten seconds.
That was the site blip we expected during the load-balancer part of tonight's maintenance.
The work would involve failovers of the load balancers, firewalls, and routers. We did not expect a prolonged outage, but we might see that short interruption on the site.
So I gave the team the number.
A failover is a handoff. For this maintenance, those handoffs were planned rather than surprises. The announcement named all three kinds of network equipment involved, but it tied the eight-to-ten-second estimate specifically to the load-balancer maintenance.
That distinction is important. I was not promising every action would take eight seconds. I was telling the team where we expected the site to blink and how long that visible interruption might last.
The physical part was moving the load balancers and core routers so they could use unique power circuits. The reason was simple: reduce our risk if we experienced a power failure.
Unique circuits are the concrete change. I am not pretending every power dependency in the facility will disappear. We are moving these load balancers and core routers physically so one power failure presents less risk to that equipment.
The same announcement carried both parts of the trade: no prolonged outage expected, but no pretend promise of zero impact either. Eight to ten seconds was small, but it was still worth saying before the work started.
That was the entire plan I announced. Fail the network equipment over, move the critical pieces, expect no prolonged outage, and be honest that the site might blink for eight to ten seconds.
I promised an update when the work was complete.
Until then, it was still maintenance in progress.