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 Server Restart Problems - Server Port is blocked by another PA component

Bernhard Busslehner's profile image
Bernhard Busslehner posted Mon March 24, 2025 04:10 AM

We are running 3 models on PA (Server Engine 11.0.00204) on Windows Server 2016.
After a full restart of the server machine we are occasionally facing startup problems of one instance.

Investigations are showing that one random component of PA (other instance, PA Agent) is already blocking the port of one other random instance and prohibiting a proper startup.

Workaround: Stopping the component that is causing the port block. Restarting causing and affected component with some time in-between.

Configs of all Instances are defining individual unique ports.
The affected port is setup by the following tm1s.cfg parameter
PortNumber=500XX

Searching in the CMD-Shell what is using the affected port it is showing that the ProcessID of a different PA component has established a connection to the defined PortNumber & Httpportnumber of the affected instance. Connection type "ESTABLISHED" but not "LISTENING".

Is this a know problem? Any advice on further investigations or setup changes to avoid this situation?
We can not figure out why other components of PA are blocking the port of a different instance in the first place.

help appreciated.

br, Bernhard

Markus Ullrich's profile image
Markus Ullrich posted Mon August 04, 2025 05:33 AM

Hi Bernhard,

a few months ago we thought we had solved the same problem by setting the ClientMessagePortNumber (secondary port) in the tm1s.cfg explicitly/uniquely, but it turned out, that the problem you described still occurs occasionally also with the (primary) PortNumber.

Therefore we are also still investigating further.

Regards,

Markus

James Lavierre's profile image
James Lavierre posted Fri September 19, 2025 05:08 AM

Have you guys found a solutions for this? We are also facing this issue. Happened, second time in few weeks, we have to shut down multiple instances in order to release ports they shouldn't be using. 

Bernhard Busslehner's profile image
Bernhard Busslehner posted Fri September 19, 2025 06:03 AM

Hi James,
unfortunately, we did not yet find a solution or the root cause to the problem.
Our defined ports (httpportnumber & portnumber) are unique for each instance and component of PA.
Occurs quite frequently on our DEV & TEST stages after restarts, but root cause situation is not reproduceable on demand.

@Hubert Heijkers Hi Hubert, tagged you because some clients facing the described behaviour. Are you / the dev team aware of this?
help would be appreciated.

kind regards
Bernhard

Walter Coffen's profile image
Walter Coffen posted Fri September 19, 2025 09:50 AM

I have to wonder if your port numbers are too high at 50XXX. The 24Retail tm1s.cfg has the following comment:

"# When you install a TM1 server, the default port number is 12345. Valid port values are between 5000 and 49151"

But then it promptly went ahead and used a 50xxx port numbers for 24Retail. Go figure. The comment could be from 10+ years ago, but it is still in the 24Retail TM1s.cfg file... twice.

Ports 49152–65535 on Windows are in the "ephemeral range" of ports meaning the OS might just grab one for some outbound activity. The OS automatically hands out ephemeral ports for outbound client connections. If your DB listens on, say, 55000, and the OS also tries to use 55000 for a client’s outbound connection, you can hit binding conflicts.  Are client tools being used on the server?

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