Too many concurrent client connections to Encryption Management Server

Products

• Encryption Management Server

Issue/Introduction

By default, Encryption Management Server allows a maximum of 400 concurrent client connections.

In a large environment, with many clients trying to connect to Encryption Management Server at the start of each working day, errors such as the following may appear in the Encryption Desktop log:

08:42:56 PGP  Error Sync with keys.example.com failed; server is unreachable

Note that this is the same error as appears if the client has no network connectivity to Encryption Management Server. Note too that the end user will not be notified of this error.

To verify that too many concurrent client connections are trying to connect to the server, ssh to Encryption Management Server and search for MaxRequestWorkers errors:

grep 'server reached MaxRequestWorkers setting' /var/log/httpd/error_log

Environment

Symantec Encryption Management Server release 10.5 and above.

Resolution

To double the maximum concurrent client connections from 400 to 800, ssh to the server and run the following command:

sed -i 's|400</httpd-max-clients|800</httpd-max-clients|' /etc/ovid/prefs.xml

Then restart Apache:

pgpsysconf --apache

If errors relating to MaxRequestWorkers still appear in /var/log/httpd/error_log then please open a technical support case.