Testing Network Connectivity over a Firewall prior to Installing Commvault

I guess I have been away for awhile. I was a bit surprised to realize that I have not posted anything this year. So here it goes, my first post of 2022! I have some more posts coming shortly as I have a backlog of info.

It can be helpful to test network connectivity over a firewall prior to installing Commvault. The problem is since Commvault is not yet installed there will be no listening port (typically 8403) to verify connectivity. Fortunately, there is a simple way to test this on Windows without requiring any Commvault software to be installed.

For example, lets say we have a VSA proxy in the DMZ and the Commvault infrastructure will initiate connectivity. Essentially, this will be a one-way firewall connection.

To test open PowerShell as administrator and run the following commands

Setup a temporary listener on port 8403 on the client (VSA Proxy)

$Listener = [System.Net.Sockets.TcpListener]8403

$Listener.start()

Wait, try connect from the CommServe

On the CommServe run the following command

Test-NetConnection -computername <client hostname> -port 8403

You will either get success or failure

Once the testing is complete run the following command on the client to stop the temporary listener

$Listener.stop()

Hope this helps!