vMA (vSphere Management Assistant) error: “Error connecting to server at ‘https://localhost/sdk/webService’ : Connection refused”

This post will be short as the error message:

Error connecting to server at ‘https://localhost/sdk/webService’ : Connection refused

… is thrown if you don’t target the ESXi host first with the vifptarget command.

Problem

You’ve successfully deployed vMA and completed adding servers with the vifp command but when you make an attempt to execute vicfg-nics -l --vhost <serverFQDN> remotely, you notice that you are presented with the following error:

Error connecting to server at ‘https://localhost/sdk/webService’ : Connection refused

I’m not exactly sure why this error is thrown with this message because it gives no indication of why (at least to me).

Solution

The reason why you get this error is because you haven’t executed the vifptarget command yet. Simply execute the following command prior and the connection will be established appropriately:

vifptarget --set someServerFQDN

Now when you execute:

vicfg-nics –l --vihost someServerFQDN

… you’ll get the output you expect.