Symptoms
After starting K2 in console mode the following error was thrown repetitively:
Could not connect to [SERVER NAME]
Diagnoses
The DB this installation was done against was a restore from another environment and so the Server.Server table still had reference to the initial environments K2 server and so a connection was trying to be established with it and failing.
Resolution
Remove the entry referencing the old server in the k2 table.
For this it is advised to contact K2 support as directly manipulating the database would stand in violation of the customer's support agreement.