Replicating MongoDB server on windows
Another thing to try is to run rs.status() on the notebook server and compare the state it sees with the state you saw on the PRIMARY node. The differences there may be descriptive.

The thing with Mongo is that it's very stupid by design, it relies on the OS to do everything except run the database itself (it even doesn't bother implementing a caching layer, relying on the OS block cache for that). So when I see connectivity problems like you describe, I start thinking about OS level problems like firewalls.

There are two ways to configure a pair of MongoDB instances on different servers to not talk to each other:


Configure them to listen to localhost.
Configure one to require authentication, but not the other.


If you're not doing either of those (it isn't the first, and the second is unlikely), chances are good the Windows firewalls haven't been set up to allow the nodes to talk to each other. The main and port servers can do so since they're on the same node, but the notebook server would be on the other side of a firewall. Look to that to ensure you can communicate on the ports.