How to attach a debugger to an application running on Windows Azure VM?

Question

I have minimal experience with Windows Azure.

I got a VM running, connected to it using remote desktop, pasted my C# executable there.

Then, I installed the Visual Studio remote debugging tools, started it, configured it to allow on authenticated connections from any user, and configured an endpoint to the port it mentioned (4018).

But I can't seem to be able to hook visual studio to the instance. I tried entering the VM address:port but that didn't seem to work.

Is that even possible to do, or must the remote machine be on the same network and not over the internet? Is there any guide explaining the process? Most of what I found were relating to debugging an azure application, but nothing seemed to be about an arbitrary program.

Answer 1

Remote debugging with Visual Studio Remote Debugging tools is not supported through internet - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/bt727f1t.aspx

So you may have to switch to good old style of writing logs and analysing them.

Answer 2

You can do it. See 'How to debug an Azure Virtual Machine'.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/ff683670.aspx#BK_Debugging_Cloud_Azure

That page also explains how to debug cloud services.

Also with the newer Azure tools versions, if you are running a cloud service, and you enabled the cloud service for debugging, you can actually first debug the cloud service, then you can easily switch to debugging your application by using the 'Debug -> Attach Process' menu item. (You have to set the 'Qualifier' in the dialog to that of the azure VM that you are debugging, then you should see all processes on the Azure VM show up in the attachable process list.)

Answer 3

Have you created a new cloud services for this VM so as to open that port to external? If not, any external clients won't be able to connect.

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/windows/how-to-guides/setup-endpoints/

But you might consider install VS in another VM in Azure, as that can make things faster.