Tomcat-to-tomcat connection gives SSLHandshakeException, while JavaApp-to-Tomcat works just fine

I have a Tomcat 7 server which runs some servlet I need to access via post from another Tomcat 7 server.

The connection is a SSL connection for security reasons, and I use this code to connect:

/* Load the keyStore that includes self-signed cert as a "trusted" entry. */ KeyStore keyStore = KeyStore.getInstance("JKS"); keyStore.load(new FileInputStream("myjks.jks"), "123456".toCharArray()); TrustManagerFactory tmf = TrustManagerFactory.getInstance(TrustManagerFactory.getDefaultAlgorithm()); tmf.init(keyStore); SSLContext ctx = SSLContext.getInstance("TLSv1"); ctx.init(null, tmf.getTrustManagers(), null); SSLSocketFactory sslFactory = ctx.getSocketFactory(); HttpClientBuilder builder = HttpClientBuilder.create(); SSLConnectionSocketFactory sslConnectionFactory = new SSLConnectionSocketFactory(ctx, SSLConnectionSocketFactory.ALLOW_ALL_HOSTNAME_VERIFIER); builder.setSSLSocketFactory(sslConnectionFactory); Registry<ConnectionSocketFactory> registry = RegistryBuilder.<ConnectionSocketFactory>create() .register("https", sslConnectionFactory) .build(); HttpClientConnectionManager ccm = new BasicHttpClientConnectionManager(registry); builder.setConnectionManager(ccm); CloseableHttpClient client = builder.build(); HttpPost post = new HttpPost("https://myurl.com:9999/post"); /* post has parameters - omitted */ HttpResponse response = client.execute(post); HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity(); String responseString = EntityUtils.toString(entity, "UTF-8"); int httpCode = response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode(); System.out.println(responseString); System.out.println(httpCode); 

There is problem: everytime I try to connect I get

Received fatal alert: handshake_failure

Now, the weird thing is that the exact same code run via a plain java application just works and outputs

<response data> 200 

The code on the server runs on Apache Tomcat 7.0.42 with Java 6, and the java application runs on Java 6.

This is how the Tomcat-SSL server connector is configured:

<Connector port="${tomcat.ssl.port}" protocol="HTTP/1.1" enableLookups="false" SSLEnabled="true" scheme="https" sslProtocol="TLS" secure="true" clientAuth="false" keystoreFile="${catalina.base}/conf/certstore/server.jks" keystorePass="123456" truststoreFile="${catalina.base}/conf/certstore/ca.jks" truststorePass="123456" URIEncoding="UTF-8" ciphers="SSL_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5, SSL_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, SSL_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_DSS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA" /> 

These are the supported ciphers:

SSL_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5 SSL_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA SSL_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA SSL_DHE_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA SSL_DHE_DSS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA SSL_RSA_WITH_DES_CBC_SHA SSL_DHE_RSA_WITH_DES_CBC_SHA SSL_DHE_DSS_WITH_DES_CBC_SHA SSL_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_RC4_40_MD5 SSL_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_DES40_CBC_SHA SSL_DHE_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_DES40_CBC_SHA SSL_DHE_DSS_EXPORT_WITH_DES40_CBC_SHA TLS_EMPTY_RENEGOTIATION_INFO_SCSV 

Why does the tomcat-to-tomcat connection give these problems? What should I do in order to make this code work?