Using Remote Desktop Connection Manager with Windows Azure Virtual Machines

In the Earlier post, I have explained how to use (RDP Man) to Remote Desktop machines, recently I was in a situation where in I had to work on Windows Azure Virtual machines. 

The Network team who created the VM’s had sent an email with the DNS names and the port numbers (of course login details in separate email. To my surprise, there was no ip address mentioned for the VM’s in the email. (I could have got it sending an email).

Below are the steps to add / manage connections to virtual Machines in Windows Azure using the Remote Desktop manager (Rdp Man)

1.   Open RDP Manager (if not installed here is the link )

2.   Now Add a Server Group (just to separate these servers from other servers and put it in a separate Group).

Note: The actual benefit of adding a group (in case you are managing large number of connections) is you can navigate quickly and manage setting for a single point (specifying the settings that are common to all servers in the group properties, which will be inherited by all the servers in the group) Although this is not a mandatory setting / option

3.   Right click on Group and select Add Server. This will bring up the add Server dialog box.

4.   In this dialog box you have to add the Windows Azure server (vm’s) details. Note: The only difference as compared to normal server is the port number and the DNS name (In case you don’t have the ip address).

a.    Click on Server settings tab and enter the DNS name / ip address next to Server Name

b.    Type some description (optional) next to Description.

c.    Now click on the connection Settings tab, in this tab un-check the option inherit from parent and Connect to console, enter the port number next to port

d.   You can also add login details by clicking on the login Credentials tab (or can set it for once in the Group that was created in step 2 above)

5.   Now you can simply double click to connect to the machine whenever you want.