Forgot to mention...
Node agent synchronizes with DAS (aka tries to download a copy of the DAS's central repository) this has to happen atleast once for Node agent to start. Once it has synced and then if DAS is unavailable, Node agent starts with 'older" copy of the repository.
But if there is no copy at all, the start fails as has in this case. So it is definitely an issue of node agent not being able ot reach DAS.
Thanks.
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