The server setup task sometimes fails to start the ApacheDS server instance because for some reason, BouncyCastle security provider doesn't get registered (it is added through a maven dependency rather than added to the JDK). This leads to a "connection refused" error during the test when it is trying to connect to the LDAP instance.

It worked for us if we just programatically forced registration of the BouncyCastleProvider before the initialization of ApacheDS.