PowerFlex 4.x Job Operations Hang Indefinitely Without Completion

Summary: Various job operations in PFxM may stop responding indefinitely and never be completed.

This article applies to This article does not apply to This article is not tied to any specific product. Not all product versions are identified in this article.
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Symptoms

The following scenarios have been observed (but are not limited to):

  • Resource group update job runs indefinitely

  • Adding an existing resource group job runs indefinitely

  • Expanding a resource group with one or more servers results in a job that runs indefinitely

 

It was also noticed that after jobs were started, the thin-deployer did not contain a deployment.log file for the operation.

 

ALCM pod logs show the following:

2025-05-12 21:13:37,007 [https-jsse-nio-9080-exec-2] (RestTemplateResponseErrorHandler.java:52) [ERROR] REST Error: {"detailMessage" : "Request processing failed; nested exception is java.lang.NullPointerException"
 
 "stackTrace" : [ ],
  "suppressedExceptions" : [ ],
  "status" : 500,
  "timestamp" : "2025-05-12T21:13:37.004+00:00",
  "error" : "Internal Server Error",
  "path" : "/alcm/timezone/11",
  "messages" : [ {
    "id" : null,
    "messageBundle" : null,
    "messageCode" : null,
    "severity" : null,
    "category" : null,
    "displayMessage" : "Runtime error",
    "responseAction" : null,
    "detailedMessage" : "Request processing failed; nested exception is java.lang.NullPointerException",
    "correlationId" : null,
    "agentId" : null,
    "timeStamp" : "2025-05-12T21:13:37.004+00:00",
    "sequenceNumber" : 0
  } ]

 

Impact

Unable to complete wanted operations in PFxM.

Cause

The ALCM pod may fail to parse an internal time zone XML file due to file corruption or read inconsistencies. This results in null pointer exceptions when the UI attempts to access time zone details, leading to various configuration errors. 

Resolution

To resolve this issue, several pods must be restarted.

1) Connect to one of the MVM servers using SSH.

2) Run the following command to restart thin-deployer, asmmanager, and alcm:

kubectl delete pod -n powerflex $(kubectl get pod -n powerflex |egrep -i "thin|asmm|alcm" | awk {'print $1'})


3) Restart the PFxM Job.

 

 

Impacted Versions

PFMP 4.x

Fixed In Version

PFMP 4.8

Products

PowerFlex rack, VxFlex Ready Nodes, PowerFlex custom node, PowerFlex appliance R650, PowerFlex appliance R6525, PowerFlex appliance R660, PowerFlex appliance R6625, Powerflex appliance R750, PowerFlex appliance R760, PowerFlex appliance R7625 , PowerFlex appliance R640, PowerFlex appliance R740XD, PowerFlex appliance R7525, PowerFlex appliance R840 ...
Article Properties
Article Number: 000321702
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 18 May 2025
Version:  1
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