“A general system error occurred: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it” error when powering on VMs on vCenter Server 6.0
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“A general system error occurred: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it” error when powering on VMs on vCenter Server 6.0

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Article ID: 322129

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Updated On:

Products

VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
  • Attempting to power on a virtual machine displays this error:

    A general system error occurred: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it
     
  • The same virtual machine can be powered on from the vSphere Client connected to the ESXi host.
 


Environment

VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.0.x

Cause

This is a generic error which occurs if these services are not started:
  • VMware vCenter workflow manager service
  • Starting Profile Driven Storage service

Resolution

To resolve this issue, start the VMware vCenter workflow manager service.

Windows vCenter Server

  1. On the server that runs vCenter Server, open Start > Run, type services.msc and press Enter.
  2. Right-click VMware vCenter workflow manager service and click start.
  3. Attempt to power on the virtual machine again.

vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)

  1. Connect to the VCSA shell as root. For more information, see:
     
  2. Run this command to restart the VMware vCenter workflow service (vmware-vpx-workflow):
    service --stop vmware-vpx-workflow
    service --start vmware-vpx-workflow
     
  3. Attempt to power on the virtual machine again.
     


    Additional Information