# A hardware bug caused intermittent HBase slowdowns at HubSpot

DevFeed: [A hardware bug caused intermittent HBase slowdowns at HubSpot](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/it-s-never-a-hardware-bug-until-it-is-29108.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://product.hubspot.com/blog/its-never-a-hardware-bug-until-it-is>)

Author: Charles Connell

Published: 2025-09-24T16:38:06Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [HubSpot](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/hubspot.md>)

Topics: [bug](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/bug.md>), [Hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/hardware.md>), [Databases](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/databases.md>), [Java](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/java.md>), [Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/latency.md>), [benchmarking](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/benchmarking.md>), [Monitoring](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/monitoring.md>)

Tags: [2026](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/2026.md>), [bug](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/bug.md>), [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hardware.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [monitoring](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/monitoring.md>), [openjdk](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/openjdk.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>)

## AI overview

HubSpot investigated intermittent slowdowns in HBase clusters storing CRM data. Increased request-handler occupancy, request latency, disk-read latency, CPU usage, and garbage-collection time made some page loads noticeably slower without triggering automatic failure monitoring. An OpenJDK mitigation is expected in OpenJDK 27.

## Source excerpt

Edit, April 30 2026: The OpenJDK now contains a mitigation for the hardware bug described in this article, which will appear in OpenJDK 27. Thank you to Evgeny Astigeevich at AWS for his work on the mitigation. Most software developers have heard the maxim, "it's never a compiler bug," and its companion, "it's never a hardware bug." But if you investigate enough bugs, you'll eventually find an exception to this rule, and that's what we found recently at HubSpot. I discovered how a hardware bug was affecting our users' experience.