"The remote machine is unavailable" error message after selecting "Check Access" on a red client.
The NetVault Server and all Clients are on the same network and there was no Firewall between them.
We made sure that the NetVault Client Services were running and that the all machines had the Windows Firewall and Linux IP Tables disabled.
We then performed the following commands to check if the network communication was OK:
a] From server: ping of client hostname, nslookup of Client IP Address and name.
b] From client: ping of server hostname, nslookup of Server IP Address and name.
c] From Server CLI: telnet [IP Address from Client] 20031
d] From Client CLI: telnet [IP Address from Server] 20031
NetVault Server communicates to the Client via port 20031 and 20032 on UDP and TCP, as well as vice-versa.
Then the Clients communicate via a random port to the backup device in order to backup the data.
So if some of the communication is not met, or met in time, then communication issues will happen and backups can fail.
All the above commands worked except for forward and reverse lookup from the NetVault Server to the Client.
Customer checked the DNS Server and found that incorrect settings were entered.
Once corrected, the communication to the client was rectified.
Note: These Client connectivity problems could also be due to network hardware issues as well i.e. NIC, network cables, routers, switches etc, teaming or bandwidth problems and would advise to also check this out for Client communication issues in the future.
If you have a Client that has more than one NIC, then you will have to enter in the NetVault Client Configurator – Network Manager – Connections tab, the IP Address that you are using needs to be entered in the “Preferred” field and all the IP Addresses (separated with a comma) have to be entered in the “Barred” field. This has to be setup, otherwise NetVault will not know which IP Address to communicate on.
