Azure publish issues - Busy - Restarting - Busy - Cycling

The Azure environment doesn't have all the MVC 3 assemblies. You need to make sure you reference them all in your project and set CopyLocal = true so that the assemblies get included in your Azure package. Azure will go through this infinite cycle if it can't find all the dependencies for your project.

The assemblies you need to reference are:

• Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure
• System.Web.Helpers
• System.Web.MVC
• System.Web.Razor
• System.Web.WebPages
• System.Web.WebPages.Deployment
• System.Web.WebPages.Razor

One blog I saw also mentioned needing WebMatrix.Data, but I found I did not need this one in my project.

If you have any other assemblies you are referencing that are not part of the .NET Framework, you will also need set CopyLocal = true on those as well.

Also, make sure your Azure storage setting is NOT set to "Use development storage" when you deploy to Azure -- this will cause the same problem.

If the above doesn't solve the problem, check this site for some other possible causes.

As Brian Rogers notes the requirement for asp.net MVC assemblies and points to a good resource for reasons of role being cycling. One Additional thing can help with MVC specifically. You can right click on your Web Application Proejct and select "Add Deployable Dependcies" then select ASP.NET MVC3. This will make sure all MVC3 required assemblies are with your project when depeployed.

Set the reference attribute "copy local" to "true" for each of the references used in the project. This worked for me.