azure connect between azure myWebRole and nonazure server not working

Question

My webapplication hosted on windows azure, needs to communicate with TFS Server. When any one login to my web app using live id, I want the logged in user to use my Team foundation server(TFS) credentials -username,password and domain to programatically authenticate and connect to our TFS server and create some work items.

I configured my azure connect for the communication to happen between azure WebRole and TFS server (our TFS is non-azure ).I added both the WebRole and the TFS Server into single Connection Group

In my azureportal ,I can see mywebrole and my TFSServer as connected the machine endpoint is active, and that it refreshes since the last connected updates

.But when I try to run my web application from azure and when it tries to communicate with our TFS server ,its throwing error message saying Error message : Team Foundation services are not available from server eg.,http://xyz-abcxyx-01:8080/tfs/eas/. Technical information (for administrator): The remote name could not be resolved: 'xyz-abcxyx-01'

Any suggestions to resolve this issue ?

Answer 1

You should enable remote desktop on your WebRole and connect to one of your instances. Then, try to ping the IP of your TFS server (not the hostname xyz-abcxyx-01). Maybe this is simply a DNS issue (even though using hostnames works with Windows Azure Connect).

If pinging the IP works, but pinging the hostname doesn't work you have a few options left:

• Use the IP instead of the hostname. This won't work if you configured your TFS to use host headers.
• Create an elevated startup task to modify the hosts file and map the IP to the hostname. In your code you can keep working with the hostname.
• Try to modify the DNS server configured in your WebRole to use the default DNS server + your internal DNS server. But to me this doesn't look like a clean solution.

Anyways, in each solution you'll want to store the IP/hostname in the ServiceConfiguration and make sure your code supports changes to the ServiceConfiguration. This will allow you to change the IP/hostname without having to redeploy.

Answer 2

You should check if TFS server is listening on all network interfaces, include the one created by Azure Connect (start with 2a01). Next try to connect to TFS from a machine on the local LAN, just to make sure it is configured correctly. You don't need to use IP for referring to TFS, DNS name is definitely supported out of box.