VMware Workstation – Unable to connect to the MKS: Login incorrect

This post was originally published on this site

Today i ran into the problem that i wasn’t able to connect to my vCenter via VMware Workstation. If you’re working in your homelab it’s probably helpful sometimes to have access to a VM console without to connect to an ESXi host, a vCenter Web Client or even via RDP to some management client. You can easily connect to your vCenter with VMware Workstation. I wrote a short article about how to save the login credentials in VMware Workstation.

The error message i’ve had was:

„Unable to connect to the MKS: Login (username / password) incorrect“

I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t the case. I’ve tried it with the @vsphere.local admin and also with my domain administrator. But no success.

When i searched for a solution i’ve found many hints and tips. Let me show you what i’ve found and what was my solution at the end.

Check the ESXi firewall

Next step is to make sure that the ESXi firewall isn’t blocking communication. Make sure the following incoming ports are open: 443, 902, 903

I checked that, all ok. But i still got this error message. The only port i didn’t see on the firewall port list was