Informatica – [PCSF_46002] Failed to communicate with the server

After serving me well for several years, my Informatica client suddenly stopped working.
I got the following error when trying to connect to one of my domains.

Error: [PCSF_46002] Failed to communicate with the server at [http://[server]:[port]/coreservices/DomainService].

Since it took me a good few hours to find the solution for the problem, I will write all my failed attempts and the actual solution in my case. I hope it will save someone (probably me) some time in the future. (TL;DR – delete proxy environment variables)

Verify that server is working– In my case, the domain I was trying to connect to was Production, the first thing I did is to verify that the server is up and that the integration service is running. Very quickly I found that all the target tables still get updated as expected. Knowing that the server is running, allowed to proceed with less stress.

Verify that Informatica Administration console is available.
Since I was able to connect to my Informatica Administration Web Console on http://server:port/administrator/#admin I came to the conclusion that the problem is on the client side. Luckily I was able to confirm it by connecting to the domain using one of my colleague workstation. Only after that, I understood that I am not able to connect to any domain, so the problem is on my machine without a doubt.

On the client, I followed in formatica KB suggestion at https://kb.informatica.com/solution/23/Pages/61/509256.aspx and clicked on ” Configure Domains” and tried to delete the domain entries and recreate them. This time I got almost identical message

Unable to save information for domain .
Error: [PCSF_46002] Failed to communicate with the server at [http://[server]:[port]/coreservices/DomainService].

Since the message started with “Unable to save”, the next suspect was a problem in the OS. I verified that I have permission to write to the INFA_HOME location (\clients\PowerCenterClient\domains.infa in my case). After some more googling I also tried to manually write/edit the domains.infa file and created INFA_DOMAINS_FILE environment variable pointing to it. Still, no success.

The next step is to check network connectivity. I verified that I am able to ping or telnet the server. Since pinging the computer was successful, my only remaining option was to verify that no firewall or proxy is blocking me. While searching the knowledge base on how to check the proxy setting, I came across this article
https://kb.informatica.com/solution/18/Pages/121821.aspx
from which I learned that setting the following environment variables can interfere with the efforts to connect to the domain.
• PROXY
• http_proxy
• https_proxy
Only then, I remembered that as part of the Docker installation on my PC, I did set the HTTP_PROXY environment variable. I deleted the HTTP_PROXY environment variable (on windows: My computer – properties – Advanced system settings – Environment Variables) and after a restart my Informatica client came back to life. I wish the error messages were a little clearer but I hope this blog post will help.

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