Use this command to actually start an Identity Manager Server using the JAR files in the WEB-INF/lib and the classes in WEB-INF/classes under WSHOME. The lh console command uses your Identity Manager installation environment and actually starts the Identity Manager application, but removes the application server from the equation.
If the connection is successful, the problem is specific to the application server environment or configuration.
If the connection fails, review the failure messages.
If the connection failure is the same as the application server failure, you have reproduced this failure with significantly fewer variables.
If the failure appears to be different from the application server failure, try fixing the Identity Manager connection problem first because there are fewer variables and more of these variables are under Identity Manager control.