Error: vSphere Replication Management Server could not establish connection at port 8043

Products

• VMware Site Recovery Manager

Issue/Introduction

• vSphere Replication site status shows "Not Connected" or "Unreachable".
  
  The following error appears in the Site Recovery UI:
  vSphere Replication Management Server could not establish connection to remote vSphere Replication Management Server at '<FQDN>:8043'.
  
  Logs (/opt/vmware/hms/logs/hms.log) show: java.net.SocketTimeoutException: 30,000 milliseconds timeout on connection
  
  
• Connectivity tests (curl -v telnet://<FQDN>:8043) confirm the port is open and reachable.
• Reconfiguring the appliances does not resolve the connection error.

Environment

VMware vSphere Replication  8.x, 9.x

Cause

A stale session state or SSL thumbprint mismatch exists in the Host Management Service (HMS) database.

This prevents the VRMS appliances from establishing a secure tunnel even when the network path is valid.

Resolution

If network connectivity on port 8043 is already verified as open, perform a manual session refresh:

1. Log in to the vSphere Client.
2. Navigate to Site Recovery > Open Site Recovery.
3. Select the affected Site Pair.
4. Click Actions > Reconnect.
5. Provide the credentials for the remote site vCenter Server.
6. Complete the wizard to refresh the security tokens and SSL thumbprints.
7. Verify the status returns to "Connected".

If the issue persists, ensure both VRMS appliances are configured with full FQDNs in the VAMI (https://<Appliance-IP>:5480) under Networking > Hostname.

For assistance with complex database cleanup, see Contact Support (https://support.broadcom.com/web/ecx/contact-support).