Same code, same data. HashMap has around 40K entries, keyed by a String. Timing was determined with System.nanoTime().
Local:
2015-08-21 12:46:09,958 DEBUG PERFORMANCE_ISSUE:55 - containsKey took 44336
Deployed:
2015-08-21 11:17:43,901 DEBUG PERFORMANCE_ISSUE:55 - containsKey took 4657210
I'm thinking something with GC or swapping, but was looking for other ideas...