Deploying to Azure from Visual Studio fails when connecting

Question

I have been using Visual Studio to deploy a Web Service to Azure; downloaded my publish profile to enable that and it was working fine for the past few weeks.

Today I tried to deploy an update and now all my deployments fail with the following:

17:25:03 - Preparing deployment for WindowsAzure1 - 25/03/2013 17:24:53 with Subscription ID 'xxx' using Service Management URL 'https://management.core.windows.net/'...
17:25:03 - Connecting...
17:25:04 - Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
17:25:04 - Deployment failed with a fatal error

I'm not sure what's failing here; is this saying it's unable to connect to the Service Management URL?

Last week I installed an SSL certificate on Azure and now I'm not seeing the option to download my publish settings. I know it used to be there but isn't now. Does having an SSL prevent me from somehow connecting to the management page?

Edit
Before leaving work I removed the certificate but when I then checked for the PublishProfile it was still not showing.

The PublishProfile is not available for any of the other users attached to the subscription - so I don't think it's related to my login.

Edit 2
A bit more drastic; I've now tried deleting my storage and service, to start from scratch. I created a new publishsettings file by removing the subscriptions already imported into Visual Studio and then following the link to "Sign in to download credentials". Next I created a new service and storage in Azure and tried to publish but the deployment still fails when connecting with

Object reference not set to an instance of an object

I have no idea what else I could try or what could be wrong, or where to look to find out.

Answer 1

I got the same error today. Why it wasn't working was because I hadn't uploaded the certificate in the managementportal prior to the publish.

After adding the certificate, everything worked just fine!

You can read more here: http://www.amido.co.uk/mark-omahoney/publishing-in-windows-azure-object-reference-not-set-to-an-instance-of-an-object/