Azure Cloud Service - Enable Remote Desktop Using Visual Studio

This article is a part of a series of articles related to one of the Azure Compute options, “Cloud Services”.

In our previous articles, we have learnt how to create, deploy, and scale up the size of the required VMs. In this article, we will learn how to log into the VMs that are created within the Cloud Service, using Visual Studio.

Given below is the screenshot that provides details of the Virtual Machines which are created when we deployed the application to the Cloud Service.

Service

Let’s say, you would like to log into these Virtual Machines to perform some additional configuration. You can install third party components as well, in these Virtual Machines. By default, you cannot do that because the Remote Desktop is disabled for these VMs.

In our previous article, Azure Cloud Service – Deploy Application using Visual Studio, we have learnt how to deploy the Cloud service using Visual Studio. In one of the steps, “Settings” of the “Publish Azure Application”, you need to check the “Enable Remote Desktop for all Roles” checkbox to enable the Remote Desktop option for your roles.

Publish

As soon as you check the above checkbox, the following popup will be prompted where you enter the account details which will be used for remote login purposes. Please make a note of these credentials which you will use while signing into the Virtual Machines.

Remote

Click on OK button after providing all the required details. After a few seconds, the above popup will vanish. Follow the rest of the steps explained in the Azure Cloud Service – Deploy Application using Visual Studio article.

Once the application is deployed successfully and all the VMs are provisioned, navigate to the Cloud Service’s “Roles and Instances” section in the Azure Management Portal, as shown below.

Roles and Instances

Click on any of the instances shown above. For this example, I clicked on “FrontEnd.Web_IN_0” Virtual Machine to navigate to the Instance blade, as shown below.

navigate

Now, click on the “Connect” button to download the RDP file and provide the credentials.

Connect

Clicking on the “OK” button will let you log into the VM of the selected Role.

Role

That’s it. You have learned how to enable Remote Desktop for your Virtual Machine. Hope you enjoyed reading the article. Your feedback is appreciated.

 


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