There is a known TSM problem with system state backups:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg1IC59312

Should be fixed in the 5.5.2 client, which is available now, you can try
that.
Or, it can be VSS issues.

Open a CMD window, enter:

vssadmin list writers

You should get immediate response, and the "state" of all the writers should
be stable.

vssadmihn list writers is a Windows command, no TSM code; if that hangs,
then you have to start researching and applying VSS patches:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21242128






On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 1:30 PM, David E Ehresman <deehre01 AT louisville DOT 
edu>wrote:

> TSM Server 5.4.4.0 running on AIX 5.3 with 2 bonded gig ethernet.
>
> About 15% of my WIndows servers take over 5 hours to backup SYSTEM STATE.
>  The rest all backup in 2 - 50 minutes.  How do I diagnosis what's wrong
> with the slow ones.
>
> Picking one as a starting point. It is running WIndows Server R2 Enterprise
> Edition Server Pack 2.  It has 2 quad core 2.0 GHz processors and 6.0 GB or
> ram. It's network is running at 1 gig.  It is running TSM client 5.4.2.4.
>  It is a Sharepoint SQL cluster server.
>
> Any ideas on what the problem might be or what to look at?
>