Getting "Distribution Manager failed to connect to the distribution point"

Question

We have a single site server that also has the DP role installed on it. We noticed that clients cannot get content from this DP and the application log on that server is giving the following error:

"component SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER on computer <site server> reported: Distribution Manager failed to connect to the distribution point.

Possible cause: Distribution Manager cannot access the distribution point machine because of access permissions issues.

Solution: Make sure that the site server machine account or Site System Installation account has administrative permissions on the distribution point machine."

So the SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER component on the site server cannot communicate with the DP role on the site server.

IIS WMI compatibility is installed as is Remote Differential Compression. I have tried using the site server account as well as a service account with local admin rights as the Site System Installation account but neither made a difference.

This behavior started after I did a site recovery.

Suggestions, anyone?

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Answer 1

I got rid of the errors in the datatransferservice.log by correcting the location of the content library in SMS_DP_SMSPKG$ in IIS.

I continue to get the other errors and am going to ignore them, I guess, for the moment. I do have a DP that is down that generates the same error but I get the full path in those errors. Perhaps the errors like the one in my original question are for this DP but just don't give the name/full path.

Answer 2

Hi,

It sounds like you've already checked some of the common causes for this issue.

Here are a few additional steps you can try:

1. Look at the distmgr.log file for more detailed error messages. This log can provide specific information about what might be going wrong
2. If possible, try removing the DP role, deleting any leftover folders (like SMS_DP$), and then reinstalling the DP role. This has helped others in similar situations
3. Since this started after a site recovery, there might be residual issues from that process. Ensure that all components were restored correctly and that there are no leftover configurations causing conflicts