Unable to start two ElasticSearch nodes using unicast on windows

Question

I am trying to start two ElasticSearch nodes on windows. If I use multicast, then the nodes start up properly. However, I am getting an exception when attempting to use unicast.

My settings are:

cluster.name: mycluster
name.name: NODE1
node.master: true
node.data: true
index.number_of_shards: 5
index.number_of_replicas: 1
discovery.zen.ping.multicast.enabled: false
discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts: ["node2:9200"]

and

cluster.name: mycluster
name.name: NODE2
node.master: false # tried true as well
node.data: true
index.number_of_shards: 5
index.number_of_replicas: 1
discovery.zen.ping.multicast.enabled: false
discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts: ["node1:9200"]

I can successfully start ES on node1 but when I attempt to start ES on node2, I get the following exception in node1:

[2013-10-11 15:04:02,307][WARN ][http.netty               ] [NODE1] Caught exception while handling client http traffic, closing connection [id: 0x4061b93e, /10.241.2.96:58768 :> /10.241.1.70:9200]
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: empty text
at org.elasticsearch.common.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpVersion.<init>(HttpVersion.java:97)
  at org.elasticsearch.common.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpVersion.valueOf(HttpVersion.java:62)
  at org.elasticsearch.common.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpRequestDecoder.createMessage(HttpRequestDecoder.java:75)
  at org.elasticsearch.common.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpMessageDecoder.decode(HttpMessageDecoder.java:189)
  at org.elasticsearch.common.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpMessageDecoder.decode(HttpMessageDecoder.java:101)
  at org.elasticsearch.common.netty.handler.codec.replay.ReplayingDecoder.callDecode(ReplayingDecoder.java:500)
  at org.elasticsearch.common.netty.handler.codec.replay.ReplayingDecoder.cleanup(ReplayingDecoder.java:554)
  at org.elasticsearch.common.netty.handler.codec.frame.FrameDecoder.channelDisconnected(FrameDecoder.java:365)
  at org.elasticsearch.common.netty.channel.SimpleChannelUpstreamHandler.handleUpstream(SimpleChannelUpstreamHandler.java:102)
  at org.elasticsearch.common.netty.channel.DefaultChannelPipeline.sendUpstream(DefaultChannelPipeline.java:564)
  at org.elasticsearch.common.netty.channel.DefaultChannelPipeline$DefaultChannelHandlerContext.sendUpstream(DefaultChannelPipeline.java:791)
  at org.elasticsearch.common.netty.OpenChannelsHandler.handleUpstream(OpenChannelsHandler.java:74)
  at org.elasticsearch.common.netty.channel.DefaultChannelPipeline.sendUpstream(DefaultChannelPipeline.java:564)
  at org.elasticsearch.common.netty.channel.DefaultChannelPipeline.sendUpstream(DefaultChannelPipeline.java:559)
...

My environment:

Elastic Search Version on both node1 and node2: 0.90.3
Java version: 
    java version "1.7.0"
    Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0-b147)
    Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 21.0-b17, mixed mode)

Any ideas what's happening here?

Thanks, Eric

Answer 1

9200 is the data port

unicast discovery happens from a control port 9300....

http://people.mozilla.org/~wkahngreene/elastic/guide/reference/modules/transport.html

Answer 2

The mistake I made was setting the port of the other nodes to 9200. I am no expert on this (as you can tell by my question) but I think the 9200 is the port which the clients should use to interact with the search engine; but that the other ES instances use a different port by default (perhaps 9300). By changing:

discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts: ["node1:9200"]

to:

discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts: ["node1"]

things work fine for me.