IBM Support

Deadlock Detected During VM Backup Causing Process Hang

Troubleshooting


Problem

Virtual Machine backups using IBM Storage Protect for Virtual Environments remain in a running state with no progress observed and report a deadlock detected condition.

Symptom

In the datamover dsmerror.log, messages similar to the following can be observed:

ANS9373E The backup of virtual machine ‘VM_name’ stopped because the backup operation was not progressing.
ANS0361I DIAG: VmWaitBackupDoneAndStopMovers(): Deadlock detected on process backup VM ‘VM_name’. No disks finished backing up or data sent to server in last 70 minutes.

Cause

The issue can occur when the Data Mover does not have sufficient CPU resources to handle backup processing workloads. Insufficient CPU allocation can lead to thread contention or stalled processing during virtual disk operations, which may result in:

  • Backup deadlock detection
  • Hung or stalled backup sessions

  • dsmcsvc.exe crashes

     

Environment

Data Protection for VMware is installed on Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Diagnosing The Problem

The following stack trace may be observed in the generated crash dump for dsmcsvc.exe:

Stack Trace:

0x000000003D335E66 (0x65E55DC0 0xD8AFF020 0x00000000 0x69F9298E) dsmcsvc.exe, vmCloseVirtualDisk()+166 bytes
0x000000003D349B0A (0x4430C5A0 0x4430C5A0 0x00001C70 0x00001C70) dsmcsvc.exe, VmThreadReadTop()+8618 bytes
0x000000003D1E8597 (0x224C1240 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000) dsmcsvc.exe, startThread()+279 bytes
0x00000000214C37B0 (0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000) ucrtbase.dll, wcsrchr()+336 bytes
0x000000002373E8D7 (0x00000000 0x00000000 0xFFFFFB30 0xFFFFFB30) KERNEL32.DLL, BaseThreadInitThunk()+23 bytes
0x0000000023E1C34C (0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000) ntdll.dll, RtlUserThreadStart()+44 bytes

Windows Event Viewer may also report Application Error events similar to the following:

Faulting application name: dsmcsvc.exe
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Faulting module name: dsmcsvc.exe

Resolving The Problem

Increase the Data Mover system CPU allocation to at least 4 vCPU cores.

Document Location

Worldwide

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Historical Number

TS022119801

Product Synonym

SP4VE; SP; TSM

Document Information

Modified date:
04 June 2026

UID

ibm17274976

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