Workspace stuck at Pulling stage

Problem

Starting a new workspace, the start can sometimes get stuck at the Pulling stage for an hour or longer in Domino versions 4.6.0~4.6.3 & 5.0.1.

NOTE: Pulling an image can sometimes just take a long time 10~30 minutes if the image is large (20GB~40GB).  In this case, just give it enough time and you should not need to subsequently have long pulls on startup.  The issue addressed in this article is specifically if the workspace appears stuck at pulling for longer than an hour.  To mitigate the long pulls for large images, you should create leaner more targeted Compute Environments.

Workaround

If your workspace has been stuck at Pulling for an hour or more, stop the workspace and restart it.  On the subsequent restart the image should no longer need to be pulled as it was likely successfully pulled on the first attempt. Your workspace should start normally.  If you are uncertain of your Domino version, check out this article. The defect has been corrected in Domino v4.6.4 & v5.0.2.

Why?

The Pulling stage is where the Compute Environment is moved to your workspace and the defect causes the pulling completion event to never be sent to the Domino UI.  In the background though the workspace is likely up and running.  So a stop and restart is all that should be needed to correct the problem.

If you are uncertain if you have encountered this defect or a different issue, reach out to Domino Support for assistance.