So why not a "site overloaded" page then.
I'd guess it went down like
1: "the servers are melting; Rackspace say they can handle it for $X million"
2: "take the site down while we switch over to Amazon"
1: "what do we tell customers"
2: "just stick up the 'scheduled maintenance' page".
It's perhaps on the level of lying to your boss that you got stuck in [road] traffic on the way to work.
So why not a "site overloaded" page then.
I'd guess it went down like
1: "the servers are melting; Rackspace say they can handle it for $X million"
2: "take the site down while we switch over to Amazon"
1: "what do we tell customers"
2: "just stick up the 'scheduled maintenance' page".
It's perhaps on the level of lying to your boss that you got stuck in [road] traffic on the way to work.