Let's say the following is being returned when attempting to back up a profile using the manageprofiles script.

Action can not be executed while server is running

Of course, the most obvious thing that can cause this issue is if an application server, deployment manager, node, or web server managed by the profile is running. However, there is another uncommon scenario that can cause this to occur. As part of the profile backup, the serverStatus command is used to get the status of the servers managed by the profile. If the serverStatus command is unable to authenticate, this error may be returned. You can check your <base WebSphere install directory>/profiles/your_profile/logs/serverStatus.log to see if there is a SOAP authentication issue.

[9/7/22 21:32:02:030 CDT] 00000001 ServerStatus  E   ADMU0002E: Exception attempting to process server dmgr: javax.management.JMRuntimeException: Unable to authenticate user of the incoming SOAP request

In this scenario, you will first want to refer to username password and the soap.client.props files.

If the username and password in the soap.client.props file is correct, make note of the hostname of the SOAP_CONNECTOR_ADDRESS in your <base WebSphere install directory>/profiles/your_profile/config/cells/your_cell/nodes/your_node/serverindex.xml file.

<specialEndpoints xmi:id="NamedEndPoint_4" endPointName="SOAP_CONNECTOR_ADDRESS">
  <endPoint xmi:id="EndPoint_4" host="server1.example.com" port="8880"/>
</specialEndpoints>

Use nslookup to get the IP address of the SOAP_CONNECTOR_ADDRESS host.

~]$ nslookup server1.example.com
Name:   server1.example.com
Address: 10.82.204.22

Use the ip address command to determine the IP address bound to the network interface. Notice the IP address does not match. In this scenario, you could update the <base WebSphere install directory>/profiles/your_profile/config/cells/your_cell/nodes/your_node/serverindex.xml file to have "localhost" as the host name and you should then be able to back up the profile.

~]# ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eno16777984: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:0c:29:64:f5:94 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 10.80.105.17/24 brd 10.0.0.1 scope global noprefixroute eno16777984
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe64:f594/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever