One of the more common issues that come accross our helpdesk is the failed Vault log in attempt.  We try not insult the intelligence of anyone calling in, so we forego the typical first response of “Did you type your user name and password correctly?” or “Is the server on?” (I wish other technology providers would do this to…)

The first thing I will do in this situation is to see if the list of Vaults is accessible.  This will tell me that we have valid connection to the server.  The list of Vaults can be accessed by the button with the ellipses as shown below.

Clicking this button should then show you the list of enabled Vaults on that server, as seen here.

If you get an error message here, then I will try a couple things.  There may be a proxy server in your environment, or some other kind of IP route settings.  We can try using the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) or the IP Address, as seen in the two images below.  The FQDN should be pretty easy to decipher.  The pattern is server name and the domain name (typically the part after the @ symbol in you work email address).  An example is server.domain.com; server is the server name (a.k.a. host name, third-level domain), followed by a period, domain is the name of the domain (a.k.a. second-level domain), and .com at the end, which could also be .org, or .net (a.k.a. top-level domain).

The IP address may not be as readily known.  You may try PING‘ing the server, which, if successful, responds with the IP address.  Some smart IT folks will disable the ICMP protocol (which PING is a part of), so you may just have to ask your network administrator for the IP.

There may be one more thing to try, and that is to append a port number.  Adding a port number is valid on any of the three methods above; server only, FQDN, and IP address.  To specify a port number, just add a colon and the port number to the end.  If your Vault requires a port, you will have to contact your administrator to determine which port to use.

If, after all of this, there is still trouble logging into Vault, then it may be time to seek helpdesk support.