JMeter Remote testing issues

I'm doing remote testing on 2 slave machines on Linux in CLI mode. I have set the rmi ports as below on both Master and slave machines. I'm able to telnet to ports 8080/1099 from master-slave and vice versa. Firewall is opened for these ports.

jmeter.properties:client.rmi.localport=1099

jmeter.properties:server.rmi.localport=8080

I started the jmeter-server on both master and slave nodes

   ./jmeter-server -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=10.132.89.172 (Master)
   ./jmeter-server -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=10.132.91.141 (Slave 1)
  ./jmeter-server -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=10.132.88.44 (Slave 2)

I tried to trigger test with the following command on Master node

jmeter -n -Jthreads=10 -Jrampup=30 -Jduration=60 -Jiterations=-1 -t sampletest.jmx -R 10.132.91.141,10.132.88.44 -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=10.132.89.172 -Dclient.rmi.localport=1099

I get the following issues.

1. After it logs "Starting distributed test with remote engines" on master noder, it takes about 10 or so mintues to log "Starting the test on host 10.132.91.141" and also there is lot of delay in start triggering the requests on Slave 1 and lot more delay to start on Slave 2.

2. On the Slave nodes (jmet-server.log), I see Connection refused errors to Master node. java.rmi.ConnectException: Connection refused to host: 10.132.89.172

3. Memory usgage on Slave nodes keep shooting up and results in OutOfMemory errors even after changing HEAP to xmx10g.

4. Master node is stuck at this step and never comes back.

   Waiting for possible Shutdown/StopTestNow/HeapDump/ThreadDump message on port 4445

Appreciate any input to resolve the issues.