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Windows Azure Remote Debugging

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Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release added support for remote debugging many types of Windows Azure resources. With remote debugging support from within Visual Studio, you are now able to have more visibility into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure and debug in-production cloud application.

 

 

What happens when you turn on remote debugging?

 

Once you turn on remote debugging, it packages the msvsmon along with other component needed to communicate and deploy it to your VM. There are two main components called connector and forwarder

 

Connector: The connector is the a web service which listens for commands like start the forwarder component, get processes etc.

Forwarder: The forwarder listens to an endpoint for incoming request from VS to forward it to msvsmon

You would see below configuration once you turn on remote debugging. The endpoint changes are added to the configuration file during the build. In your output directory you’ll find Cloud.build.csdef/cscfg (or similarly named) files, in which you can see what actually gets deployed. The debugger uses ports 30400-30424 and 31400-3142 and configuration looks like as below.

 

<ConfigurationSetting value="xxxxx" name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.CertificateThumbprint"/>
<ConfigurationSetting value="true" name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.Connector.Enabled"/>
 
<Endpoint name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.Connector" protocol="tcp" publicPort="30400" port="30398" address="10.78.78.4"/>
<Endpoint name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteDebugger.Forwarder" protocol="tcp" publicPort="31400" port="31398" address="10.78.78.4"/>

 

RemoteDebugger.Connect uses instanceInputEndpoint to listens to the specified port for all instance and once receive request from Visual studio, it establish a TLS connection between VS and Remote forwarder. Remote debugging is done over a custom TLS connection, rather than via msvsmon’s built-in connection security, because msvsmon was not designed to be used over the internet. The forwarder is the server-end of that connection that listens to the endpoint for incoming request from VS and it forwards incoming traffic to the msvsmon instance running on the same box. Once the connection in established then it will hit the breakpoint in your code in VisualsStudio.

 

 

 

How to turn on remote debugging?

 

To enable remote debugging for your cloud service, select Debug as the Build Configuration on the Common Settings tab of your Cloud Service’s publish dialog wizard:

 

 

Then click the Advanced Settings tab and check the Enable Remote Debugging for all roles checkbox:

 

 

Once your cloud service is published and running live in the cloud, simply set a breakpoint in your local source code:

 

 

Then use Visual Studio’s Server Explorer to select the Cloud Service instance deployed in the cloud, and then use the Attach Debugger context menu on the role or to a specific VM instance of it. You can also attach multiple instance if available.

Once the debugger attaches to the Cloud Service, and a breakpoint is hit, you’ll be able to use the rich debugging capabilities of Visual Studio to debug the cloud instance remotely, in real-time, and see exactly how your app is running in the cloud.

 

 

Limitations

 

Instances: Publish will fail if the role has more than 25 instances.

 

Traffic: As the debugger communicates with Visual Studio and that Azure charges for outbound data. The data transferred is not big and shouldn’t be too big a deal.

 

Native debugging: For CTP tooling does not enable native debugging.

 

Ports: The debugger uses ports 30400-30424 and 31400-31424. If you use ports that conflict with the debugger ports you’ll see the following message: "Allocation failed. Please retry later, try reducing the VM size or number of role instances, or try deploying to a different region."

 

VS Restart after full deployment: If you do a full deployment and the VIP changes you need to restart VS to attach the debugger.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 26, 2014
    A GOOD WALKTHROUGH WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2014
    Thanks Srinivasan for your feedback. MSDN has published an article with step by step setup. Let me know if this helps.msdn.microsoft.com/.../ff683670.aspx

  • Anonymous
    December 29, 2014
    I am unable to attach to the remote debugger for a worker role cloud service. (Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 working with Azure SDK 2.3)Microsoft Visual StudioThere was a failure to launch the remote debugger.OK  I notice the cloud service project does not insert all those remotedebugger configurations into the cscfg/csdef files. Any ideas what is happening?

  • Anonymous
    April 02, 2015
    I tried it but i get "The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters. C:Program Files (x86)MSBuildMicrosoftVisualStudiov12.0Windows Azure Tools2.5Microsoft.WindowsAzure.targets"error

  • Anonymous
    June 29, 2015
    I am missing the "Attach Debugger" option from one of my Azure websites.  My other Azure websites listed along side it have the Attach Debugger option.  In the settings for the site, under "View Settings" I have verified that Remote Debugging is set to "on".  Also, the Attach Debugger option was available last week and I was in fact using the remote debugging on this site previously.  Any hints on where I should be looking to re-enable this?

  • Anonymous
    September 04, 2015
    You may have to disable the Debugging Option 'Enable Just My Code' in Visual Studio . Well... I had to disable that to make it work!

  • Anonymous
    September 11, 2015
    Anjana, Can you please answer Aaron's questions! I am experiencing similar issues.

  • Anonymous
    February 11, 2016
    Is it possible to connect a remote kernel debugger to an Azure VM?  Like VM to VM?

  • Anonymous
    April 22, 2016
    Nice article. I did all the steps as mentioned. Whenever I try to attach debugger it opens up a pop up saying that it is trying to get processes to attach and post that it shows an error "failed to launch debugger". Please suggest.