Why RDP stops working randomly

Question

Hi Everyone,

I've been using Windows Azure for the past 10 months and in the start i saw one issue on random occasions. My issue is RDP to the Azure Instance stop working randomly. Sometimes when i deploy the package on Windows Azure Instance it runs smoothly for around 2 or 3 months and i can connect to that instance via RDP without any issue. But then suddenly i started connectivity issues and when i connect to the instance via RDP it hangs on the screen saying Initiating Remote Connection and then it gives error after 10 to 20 secs that Remote Desktop Cannot connect to the Remote computer.....................

I even downloaded new RDP file from the Windows Azure Management portal and even tried to connect to the RDP from a different location with different ISP but all in vein. So to overcome this issue i had to Reboot the instance from Azure Management Portal which is very bad. Although i can live with that for a Development environment but it can't be tolerated in case of Production environment. The one particular thing i have noticed is that instance which gives this issue is "Extra Small" Compute Instance while i have two Production servers having "Small" Compute Instance on which i never seen this issue so far. Application running on development and production environment is same.

A week earlier i upgraded my Development environment with a new package and i did RDP to that instance frequently which worked fine. But today it again stopped working and the only solution i have left for this issue is to restart.

Can someone give me insight why this is happening and how can i prevent this?

Regards,

Ammar

Answer 1

Hello Ammar,

For RDP issue, there are mainly three scenarios.

l  Could not connect instance after it is initialized, in other words, RDP is not successfully from the start.

First check you login username and password to see if it has met the password policy of Windows Server OS or not, for example, while set “User: amit123, Pass: aMit123” for RDP login in Visual Studio, it is permitted, but this username/password does not meet the password policy of Windows Server 2008 R2, after the deployment is uploaded to Azure, the login “User: amit123, Pass: aMit123” will not work in RDP and give an RDP error. So in this situation, if you username and password is not strong, you can test a standard login like “User: testadmin, Pass: test@12345”.

if the standard login still does not work for you, that must be the problem related Azure fabric, that means the instance is not rightly initialized which causes the problem in RDP. So Azure fabric need to do some repairing for this problem instance. In this situation, you are very encouraged to contact our Azure support, then we will do the needful as soon as possible, actually, it is very very low possibility to see a problem instance in Azure fabric.

l  Could not connect instance after a successful RDP or accidentally RDP terminate.

In this scenario, the most possible is that the remote access process in certain instance is stuck because the past successful RDP session or the past RDP terminate, to solve this problem, we can reboot the instance and wait it to be fully initialized again, and after it comes to ready, try to login it, that should work.

l  Never succeed in RDP even with standard login in several deployments.

This scenario rarely happens due to client machine environment issue, such as firewall, development SDK conflicts and so on. We need do troubleshooting for this scenario by many tools, before troubleshooting, the fast way to check it is to RDP in another machine out of that same network environment.

Thanks.

Jian

Answer 2

Hi Jian,

Thank you for the reply.

As for the points you have mentioned i don't have any login password issue because it didn't even reach at the stage where it asks for the password. So to check whether is it my machine issue firewall issue i even tried to connect it from different machine using different ISP but it is also not successful. Even i'm not sure whats wrong with the Azure Fabric because most of the times RDP work correctly but then suddenly after some time may be a week or month it stops working. Sometime i stops working after a day of deployment. 

When i created this thread i rebooted the instance which solved my issue. I did RDP to that instance frequently on that day. Now its again the same issue i can't connect to RDP again. So i will contact Azure support now as this issue becoming so painful.

Regards,

Ammar

Answer 3

hello Ammar,

thank you for your update.

as i mentioned, one exception in RDP will make following RDPs not work fine, because the mstsc.exe will be stuck there and fails to accept new connection request.

"the most possible is that the remote access process(mstsc process) in certain instance is stuck in the past successful RDP session or the past RDP terminate, to solve this problem, we can reboot the instance and wait it to be fully initialized again, and after it comes to ready, try to login it, that should work."

hope everything is fine now, if you have any concern about it, feel free to post it here.

regards.

Jian

Answer 4

Hi Jian,

I understand your point and it makes sense. But my fear is what if the same process stuck on the Production environment. I can live with the Rebooting solution for Development environment but not for the Production one. Rebooting is not the solution any person would want. So i need to understand how can i avoid this issue or is there any configurations for a VM role where we can set if a user RDP session is running for too long period of time it would terminate itself.

Although as i mentioned in the post my Development environment is "Extra Small" compute instance. While Production environments are "Small" compute instance. I usually saw this issue on Development environment and i don't remember that i have same issue on the Production one. Package deployed on both environments are same. So i'm feeling that it is something to do with the Compute Instances.

Regards,

Ammar

Answer 5

Hello Ammar,

how is the RDP working for you now?

there is no direct relationship between stuck and compute instance, the most possible reason for stuck is changing deployment configuration through portal while connecting the Azure instance.

You can try it again in production environment, if you still meet that, you can let me know the deployment ID, login password and your RDP file by sending me an email, then i can investigate more on it.

thanks.

jian |  [e-mail]