Thursday, November 5, 2015

Cannot Start a VM - A general system error occurred: Connection refused

The error referenced in the title was one I ran into today while trying to start some VMs.  I finally found a KB somewhat related to this issue and the workaround did the trick for me.

Basically, the vCenter Workflow Manager service had stopped on my vCenter server.  In my case, I'm running the 6.0.0 vApp so I had to open an SSH session and enter the following:

shell.set --enabled true
shell
service-control --status vmware-vpx-workflow
   (this command confirmed the service was stopped)
service-control --start vmware-vpx-workflow

Once running, I was able to start VMs again from vCenter.

Not sure why this was so hard to find in a web search but hopefully the search engines will pick up this blog post and save people some time!

See also:

VMware KB: VMware NSX for vSphere 6.x Controller deployment fails the error: Failed to power on VM NSX Controller
VMware KB: Stopping, starting, or restarting VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 services

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26 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 28, 2015 at 3:13 AM

    Thanks! This worked for me although I had a different issue but same symptom. vmware-vpx-work service was already running so I checked the logs and for some reason, vcenter was attempting to connect to localhost instead of wsxhost when powering on. Restarted the service and its now connecting to the correct host.

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  2. AnonymousDecember 3, 2015 at 11:34 AM

    Thank you for posting this! This was exactly what I needed

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  3. UnknownJanuary 15, 2016 at 1:03 AM

    Thanks for the post, very helpful!

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  4. AnonymousJanuary 19, 2016 at 11:56 PM

    Thanks u its helps us to resolve the issue.

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  5. AnonymousFebruary 18, 2016 at 7:32 AM

    Thanks John, it works!

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  6. UnknownMarch 7, 2016 at 2:16 PM

    Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousMay 5, 2016 at 9:54 AM

    Just had an issue where I couldn't power on VM's in vCenter. I was able to start the VM via an SSH session to the ESXi host it was on, but that didn't address the root cause. Your article did. Thanks!

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  8. Andres CortesJune 20, 2016 at 12:39 PM

    Thank´s

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  9. Andres CortesJune 20, 2016 at 12:41 PM

    thank´s.

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousJuly 20, 2016 at 7:52 AM

    Fantastic. Running vCenter on a Windows server, had this same problem, and checked to see if this service had stopped. The full name of the service in Windows is "VMware vCEnter workflow manager" - started it and works perfectly.

    Thank you!

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  11. AnonymousAugust 4, 2016 at 4:23 AM

    TADA, brilliant. solved my problem.

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  12. UnknownNovember 27, 2016 at 4:47 AM

    worked for me too, thanks.

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  13. AnonymousDecember 8, 2016 at 2:57 AM

    for me just worked when i rebooted all the ESX nodes in the cluster, as the service in the vCenter was running, and the restart didn't make it.

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  14. AnonymousJanuary 4, 2017 at 3:29 AM

    Thanks :-)

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  15. AnonymousMarch 7, 2017 at 3:11 PM

    In my case it didn't worked, I have an error code 1, some help is appreciate!!!

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  16. AnonymousMarch 21, 2017 at 11:25 AM

    This saved me an agonizing phone call and follow up discussions as to what happened. Thanks!

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  17. AnonymousJune 9, 2017 at 7:24 AM

    This helped me finding the cause of the "connection refused" error, unfortunately the workflow service would't start. a reboot of the vcenter appliance did the trick.

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  18. AnonymousJune 30, 2017 at 1:23 AM

    Thanks, this helped me out!

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  19. AnonymousJuly 3, 2017 at 5:32 PM

    I received an error message when I tried to start the service and it showed as still being stopped when I rechecked the status, but the VMs now start and don't give me the general system error so I guess it's a success?

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    Replies
    1. AnonymousOctober 1, 2017 at 10:31 AM

      Same for me! I'll just schedule a reboot of the vCenter and Platform server VMs at some point I guess...

      Delete
    2. AnonymousOctober 1, 2017 at 4:20 PM

      Nah still wasn't quite right and the vCenter appliance even hung on rebooting. Reset it and now all is good again!

      Delete
  20. AnonymousOctober 16, 2017 at 1:38 PM

    This is happened to me this morning, and this worked flawlessly. Thanks. This is what the internet is for, not posting dumb crap online, and getting in trouble over it.

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    Replies
    1. John DiasOctober 16, 2017 at 1:39 PM

      Hah, glad you got benefit. And I agree, that's pretty much my rule of thumb when posting on blogs or social media! :)

      Delete
  21. AnonymousDecember 14, 2017 at 4:19 AM

    Hi John. We have the same version 6.0.0. and your information was perfect to solve our problem. Thank you very much.
    Wagner Bagatelli - São Paulo - Brazil

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  22. AnonymousMay 7, 2018 at 10:54 AM

    Yup, works for me too! Same version.

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  23. UnknownMay 12, 2018 at 6:44 AM

    Thanks, this worked for me, managed to power on my vm after running the command.

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