GemFire 6.x and 7.x Locator starts up, but fails after initial discovery

Products

• VMware Tanzu Gemfire

Issue/Introduction

GemFire 6.x / 7.x Locator starts up, but fails after initial discovery.

• When you start GemFire, the locator connection begins, but fails after discovery.
• Connection can fail with cache servers, but is typically observed with locators first.

This occurs when UDP is blocked (such as by Windows Firewall), which GemFire uses to communicate between peer members, such as cache servers and locators.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, allow the necessary UDP traffic with either of the following resolutions:

• Remove the firewall rule that blocks UDP traffic
  or
• Set membership-port-range in the gemfire.properties file to restrict the port range used for membership communication.