To log on to a virtual machine running Windows Operating system in Windows Azure,we usually use a Remote Desktop Connection to achieve that. However, we may encounter issues during the Remote Desktop Connection and there are multiple reasons for RDP issues in Azure.
Next, we will introduce the common troubleshooting steps without recreating the Azure Virtual Machine for RDP issues in Azure. According to the error messages, we divide the article into two main parts:
1. Remote Desktop cannot connect to the remote Azure Virtual Machine
Sometimes, after you use the Connect button in the Management Portal to start a Remote Desktop Connection, the error message would be prompted as below:
Figure 1. Error message for Remote Desktop Connection
If you encounter the error message above, you can start troubleshooting from the three parts below:
1) Check the basic information for the Virtual Machine that you want to log on:
1. Check the quick glance in the Dashboard of the Virtual Machine and ensure that the Virtual Machine is running and other parameters are all displayed. If not, please restart the Virtual Machine to see if the issue persists. The figure below is the screen capture of quick glance for an Azure Virtual Machine in our test.
Figure 2. Quick glance of an Azure Virtual Machine
Check the endpoint for Remote Desktop to ensure that it is existing or not. If not, you can recreate a new endpoint for Remote Desktop.The figure below is the screen capture of the endpoints for the Virtual Machine lab01.
Figure 3. Endpoints of an Azure Virtual Machine
2. Check the Azure Status page to make sure that no known issues happened in the region that the Virtual Machine belongs to:http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/status/
3. Besides, resizing the Azure Virtual Machine may fix the issue if there is a problem specific to the host where the Azure Virtual Machine is currently running. SinceD: drive will be lost and the internal IP address of the Azure Virtual Machine will also be changed if the Azure Virtual Machine ends up on a different host after resizing, please make sure that no important data on the D: drive and no influence would be caused by changing the internal IP address.
2) Check the Remote Desktop configuration on the local side
You need to make sure that Remote Desktop service is not blocked on your local side.
You can enable Telnet Client on your local computer and run “telnet xxx.cloudapp.net public_port_for_Remote_Desktop” at the command prompt to see if it is able to connect to the VM using the public port of the endpoint for Remote Desktop.If you receive any error message when running the Telnet command, it means a failure.
In our test, since TCP port 59585 is the public port for Remote Desktop, we ran “telnet lab0.cloudapp.net 59585” at the command prompt in our local computer and it was able to connect. You can refer to the figures below:
Figure 4. Telnet the public port for Remote Desktop on local side
Figure 5. Result of Telnet
You can also connect from different network to see if it is possible to connect. If connecting from a different network succeeds, maybe the Remote Desktop connection is blocked by your local side. Then you can open the related ports to make the Remote Desktop Connection succeed. If the Remote Desktop connection is blocked by the corporate firewall, you need to contact the corporate network administrator for help.
3) Check changes on the Azure Virtual Machine
You need to check that if you had done any changes related to Remote connections on the Azure Virtual Machine.
If you choose the option “Don’t allow remote connections to this computer” in the Remote Desktop settings or disable Remote Desktop in Windows Firewall on the Azure Virtual Machine, you can use the cmdlets below to enable RDP and the necessary Windows firewall rule for the Azure Virtual Machine if you have install VM agent on the Azure Virtual Machine:Get-AzureVM -ServiceName “xxx” -Name “xxx”| Set-AzureVMAccessExtension | Update-AzureVM
In addition, you can also use Remote PowerShell endpoint to execute PowerShell commands remotely on Azure VM from our local machine to change the related configurations:
Remote PowerShell in Azure IAAS Virtual Machines
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