Encountering a Could not connect to Access Server using the <server name> and <port number>. Access Server may be down or the host name and/or port number may be incorrect message when logging into Management Console or connecting to Access Server

Environment

CDC Replication for all replication engines.

Symptoms

While attempting to log into Management Console, you receive the following error message:

Could not connect to Access Server using the <server name> and <port number>. Access Server may be down or the host name and/or port number may be incorrect. Verify your connection settings and try again.

Causes

There are several causes for not being able to connect to Access Server:
  • Your user name, password, host name, port number, or combination, specified to access Management Console is incorrect.
  • The Access Server service may not be running.
  • If you are running a client firewall, it may be blocking Management Console.
  • If you are running a server firewall between Access Server and Management Console, it may be blocking local ports to access Management Console.

Resolution

If you cannot access Management Console because of an incorrect user name, password, host name, port number, or combination, take action depending on your access level with Management Console. If you are a system administrator, log on using the user name, password, host name, and port number that you specified when you installed and configured Access Server and Management Console. If you are a user without system administrator authority, you may not have the correct Management Console login information. Contact your system administrator to verify this information.

If you cannot access Management Console because Access Server has not started, you must start it. On Windows, select Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services. Next, right-click IBM® InfoSphere® Data ReplicationAccess Server and click Start. On the UNIX or Linux platforms, navigate to the /bin directory under your Access Server installation directory and run ./dmaccessserver &.

If you cannot access Management Console because of client firewall blocking Management Console, modify your client firewall configuration settings:
  1. Locate the file you use to configure your client firewall settings.

    If you are unsure of how or where to edit firewall configuration settings, consult your firewall documentation.

  2. Add DmClient.exe to the list of firewall exceptions.
If you cannot access Management Console because of server firewall blockages between Access Server and Management Console, create a well-defined set of ports between Access Server and the datastore and then ensure your firewall allows connections to those ports:
  1. Open the dmaccessserver.vmargs file in a text editor. This file is located in the conf directory under your Access Server installation directory.
  2. Edit the local_port and local_port_count entries as follows:

    -jar lib/server.jar local_port:<first_port> local_port_count:<number_available_ports> <Access_Server_listener_port>

    where the variables are the following:
    <first_port>
    The first port in the range that you want the Access Server service to use when sending messages or establishing connections.
    <number_available_ports>
    The number of ports you want to reserve for this use.
    To calculate the number of Access Server ports to open, use this formula: 
    number of ports to open 
= 2 * (number of users + (number of users * number of datastores) 
+ number of datastores)
    where a datastore refers to an instance InfoSphere CDC.
    <Access_Server_listener_port>
    The port number that Access Server listens on. This is set during the Access Server installation. You do not have to specify a value here if you are using the default port number of 10101.

    For example, if the number of available ports for communication is 500 and you want Access Server to listen for connections on port 10101, then the entry would be as follows: -jar lib/server.jar local_port:10102 local_port_count:500 10101. This enables Access Server to listen for connections on port 10101 and restricts it to using ports in the range of 10102 to 10601.

  3. Restart the Access Server service to the new firewall settings to take effect.
  4. Modify your firewall configuration settings to accept connection to the Access Server ports defined in the previous step.