Spotfire Node Manager can not be trusted and / or run any services

There can occasionally be issues getting Spotfire nodes to function correctly.

Problems include nodes not appearing in "Untrusted Nodes", being greyed out, or node services not being able to run or throwing errors upon startup.

This article describes what actions can be taken before submitting a ticket to support.

Ports

The Spotfire cluster uses the following ports for node and server communication.

Node registration port (Default 9080)
This port is used for new nodes to submit a CSR (Certificate Signing Request to the Spotfire Server. Until trust has been established all communications use this unencrypted port. The port is required to be open on both server and node manager at all times.

Node communication port (Default 9443)
This port is used for communication between server and node manager. Once trust has been established communications are sent over this encrypted port. The port is required to be open on both server and node manager at all times.

Node data port (Default 9501, 9502 (for TERR))
Binary data related to the particular service (e.g. Web Player) is sent using this encrypted port.

1) Check the ports are listening and are attached to the correct processes

The following powershell one-liner will check if the ports are open and the correct processes are listening on them.  This checks what processes are listening on ports 9080 and 9443. The same command should be run on both server and node manager.

Foreach ($port in 9080,9443){Write-Host -ForegroundColor green "`nPort $port" ; Get-Process -Id(Get-NetTCPConnection -Localport $port).OwningProcess}

Sample output on a node manager:
Note the listening process is java



Sample output on a Spotfire server:
Note the listening process is tomcat9



2) Check that the ports can accept connections

The following PowerShell command can be run from the node manager to check it can reach the Spotfire server on port 9080 (replace myspotfire server with the hostname of your Spotfire server).

Test-NetConnection -ComputerName myspotfireserver -Port 9080

Sample output:



Repeat for port 9443.

The same test  can then be done from the Spotfire server to the node. Note that only port 9080 will be open until the node is trusted. Include port 9443 after the node appears online in nodes and services.

3) Check hostname resolution

During the installation of a new node it's important when prompted for the supervisor address that the same address is given as appears in Nodes and Services for the Sotfire server.

Furthermore, the hostname should be able to be resolved in DNS. If DNS is not available then manual entries to the hosts file can work on a temporary basis. This should not be a permanent solution.

Use tools such as ping or nslookup to check if the hostname can be resolved.

Most issues can be solved by addressing the points in this article. Please contact the Perkin Elmer support desk if you continue to experience problems.