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Hetzner is using a Megawatt more power because of linux leap-second bug
Email I just got from Hetzner (large european provider). Shows that small bugs can have big real-world consequences:
During the night of 30.06.2012 to 01.07.2012 our internal
monitoring systems registered an increase in the level of
IT power usage by approximately one megawatt.
The reason for this huge surge is the additional switched
leap second which can lead to permanent CPU load on Linux
servers.
According to heise.de, various Linux distributions are
affected by this. Further information can be found at:
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Leap-second-Linux-can-freeze-1629805.html
In order to reduce CPU load to a normal level again, a
restart of the whole system is necessary in many cases.