Debugging and troubleshooting Azure applications using Visual Studio

2. Debugging and troubleshooting Azure applications using Visual Studio Boris Scholl Sr. Program Manager Visual Studio Azure Tools 3-547

3. Agenda • Overview • Cloud Services • Windows Azure Diagnostics • IntelliTrace • Profiling • Windows Azure web sites • Diagnostics • Live Tracing • Visual Studio Developer Desktop • Summary

4. Overview • Common issues with Azure applications. • Environmental differences. • What works in the Azure Emulator does not work in Azure. • Performance issues. • Site loads slowly. • Computation takes a long time. • Logical issues in code. • My computation task returns a wrong result.

5. Cloud Services – Windows Azure diagnostics • What can I use Azure Diagnostics for? • Collects the following diagnostics information. • Windows event logs. • Performance counters. • Azure logs (trace logs, infrastructure logs). • IIS logs (IIS logs, failed requests logs). • Crash dumps. • Custom logs.

6. Cloud Services – Windows Azure diagnostics • How does it work in a developer scenario? Web/app.config Diagnostics.wadcfg Web/app.config Diagnostics.wadcfg wad-control-container

7. Cloud Services – Windows Azure diagnostics • What is the precedence of the configuration options? • Diagnostics monitor precedence for configuration. • BLOB storage • Code • Diagnostics.wadcfg • Default config

8. Note – Azure web role architecture • Keep in mind that there are two processes. MvcWebRole1 *.cspack WaIIShost.exe MvcWebRole1.dll MvcWebRole1.dll AppRoot Package w3wp.exe MvcWebRole1.dll MvcWebRole1.dll SiteRoot

9. Windows Azure Diagnostics in Visual Studio

10. Cloud Services – Windows Azure diagnostics • Azure diagnostics things to keep in mind! • Visual Studio includes the diagnostics agent by default. • If the diagnostics connection string is not changed the diagnostics data will be stored in the storage account used for publishing. • Failed requests need to be setup manually in web.config. • Need to add config file for RoleEnvironment diagnostics. • Redeploy required if changes are made to code or config. • You can avoid a full redeploy by using RoleInstanceDiagnosticManager. • Tracing strategy can be tested locally by using the storage emulator.

11. Cloud Services – IntelliTrace (Visual Studio Ultimate) • What is IntelliTrace ? • A debugging experience allowing you to rewind/replay program execution in the debugger. • Captures WaIIShost.exe and w3wp.exe events. • Great for chasing down logical errors. • Great for detecting missing assemblies*. • *We improved Visual Studio to detect missing assemblies during Build time. If missing assembly is detected we provide a Build warning.

12. Cloud Services – IntelliTrace Azure role instance IntelliTrace.exe User requests logs IntelliTrace agent Visual Studio *.itrace Polls queue every1 second Create Agent Q GetLogs, Q1 *.itrace Create Q1 and place request in agent Q Create Snapshot Upload to BLOB Pending Complete Upload to Visual Studio Azure storage = user storage account!

13. IntelliTrace

14. Cloud Services – Profiler (Visual Studio Pro) • What does the profiler do? • Instrumentation • Records how long every method takes to execute. • Useful when the app is slow/blocked waiting for another operation (call another service, database call etc.) • Impacts perf of application if many short running function. • Can create gigs of log files in minutes. • Sampling • Very lightweight. • Useful for identifying inefficient algorithms.

15. Cloud Services – Profiler (Visual Studio Pro) • What does the profiler do? • TIP (Premium+ feature) • Used in conjunction with instrumentation*. • Records ADO.NET database queries. • Resource contention data (concurrency) • Detects threads waiting for other threads. • Useful for detecting performance problems caused by lock contentions. • *Used to work with sampling on Windows 7

16. Profiler

17. Cloud Services – IntelliTrace/profiler • Things to keep in mind/tricks. • Concurrency of agents • CLR agents cannot run concurrently. • Polling interval • Polling interval can be changed. • Add key <add key=" RequestPollInterval" value="00:00:10"/> to WindowsAzureDiagnosticsAgent.exe.config (C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Azure Tools\Visual Studio 11.0\1.8\VsDiagnostics).

18. Azure web site – Diagnostics • Windows Azure web sites diagnostics options • Site diagnostics • Detailed error logging. • Failed request tracing. • Web server logging. • Application diagnostics • Produced by the web application itself. • Works similar to Cloud Service diagnostics. • Use System.Diagnostics.Trace class. • No configuration required.

19. Azure web site – Diagnostics • Windows Azure web sites can be enabled from the portal and Visual Studio Server Explorer • Diagnostics configuration • Logging level • Informational • Warning • Error • File system • Stores data on web site file system • Can be accessed by FTP or downloaded • Storage • Stores data in Windows Azure storage account • In WAWSAppLogTable (similar schema as WADLogs) • Streaming logs • Live stream to PowerShell Window, Command Line or Visual Studio

20. Azure BLOB Azure Table Storage Web site diagnostics architecture • How does it work in • a developer scenario? Web App Azure Drive Trace Listener Azure TableTraceListener Kudu Log streaming Streamed Logs WebSite Drive

21. Windows Azure Web Sites Diagnostics

22. Developer desktop preview in Azure • I need to debug and troubleshoot an application and I need to set up an environment quickly. • Developer desktop on Azure IaaS • Supports SharePoint, Web and SQL development. • Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate Preview pre-installed. • SharePoint 2013 pre-installed. • SQL Server 2012 Express pre-installed. • Scripts to configure the environment included. • Great for spinning up dev environments quickly. • Can be provisioned from portal or entirely through PowerShell with AD support.

23. Resources • http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/common-tasks/diagnostics/ • http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/best-practices/troubleshooting-web-sites/

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