Symptoms

Access to your virtual machine using VMware Remote Console (VMRC) fails with the error message "Connection Error".

Cause and Solutions
 

• Missing or incorrect proxy settings
  
  The following parameters must be set in the VMRC settings file¹:

  pref.remoteVMConnProxy.enabled = "TRUE"
  pref.remoteVMConnProxy.uri = "http://vmrc-proxy-1.zih.tu-dresden.de:3128/"
  

  Alternative proxy server URL:

  "http://vmrc-proxy-2.zih.tu-dresden.de:3128/"

• Using the legacy connection mode
  
  Previously, communication from the VMRC to the host systems of the virtualization environment used the MKS port tcp/902. This required the legacy connection mode to be activated in the VMRC settings.
  
  To ensure that all connections are encrypted and routed through the proxy server via the websocket port tcp/443, make sure that the following parameters are either not present in the VMRC settings file¹ (default) or are set as follows:

  pref.preferWebMKS = "TRUE"
  pref.preferWebRemoteDevice = "TRUE"

• Decentralized firewall
  
  To confirm missing rules in your institution's firewall as the cause of the problem, first connect to a VPN. More information about VPN can be found here.
  If the VMRC connection from VPN works, the following rules must be added to the firewall by your institution's firewall administrator:

  Destination IP addresses	Port
  172.26.53.10 (vmrc-proxy-1.zih.tu-dresden.de) 172.26.57.10 (vmrc-proxy-2.zih.tu-dresden.de)	tcp/3128

%APPDATA%\VMware\preferences.ini

If the file does not exist, create it or start the VMRC once.

~/Library/Preferences/VMware Remote Console/preferences

~/Library/Containers/com.vmware.vmrc/Data/Library/Preferences/VMware Remote Console/preferences

Linux

~/.vmware/preferences