How do I start running a Windows Azure Service's Worker Role?

Question

If I have a Windows Azure Service consisting of only Worker Roles, do the worker roles start automatically or I need to start it manually?

I have some debugging print statements like Trace.WriteLine(...) in the Run and OnStart methods, but it seems those statements are not logged. What could be the causes?

Answer 1

When the service is deployed the role instances will start up automatically. Cory Fowler wrote up a great post explaining the Startup Lifecycle of a Windows Azure Role. The article is a little older as it still mentions the VM Role which as been deprecated in favor of the new Windows Azure Virtual Machine features. The information about the actual start up stuff is all still golden as far as I know.

As for why you are not seeing your trace writelines, where are you looking for them at? You may not have all the configuration setting correct to gather then up. Check out the Hands on Lab for Debugging Cloud Services for step by step and compare to your solution.