Error connecting to /bin/vmx process and cannot open a local pipe to local virtual machine

By | April 16, 2015

Today, when I wanted to power one my virtual machine, I got the following error:

An error was received from the ESX host while powering on MK_SIM.

Connection error while establishing connection (11): Error connecting to /bin/vmx process. Cannot open a local pipe to local virtual machine '/vmfs/volumes/....

Under investigating I realized that there was a VM process on my ESXi host:Error connecting to process and cannot open a local pipe to local virtual machineI killed the above process by runningĀ kill 168482 and I could power on the VM.

So steps to solve the problem:

  1. Log in to ESXi host via SSH (how to enable SSH, please follow here).
  2. Run command ps | grep name_of_vm.
  3. Then kill the process nr that you received in the step 2. kill id.
Author: Mariusz

Architect (~ 15 years experience based on passion...) with strong background as a System Administrator and Engineer. Focused on Data Center Solutions: Virtualization/Cloud Computing and Storage/Backup Systems. Currently living in Poland.