SP Products Config Wizard fails for Socket Error Connection Refused - New Azure Setup (firewalls turned off)

Question

Hi all,
I'm using this guide: "Step-by-Step: Build a FREE SharePoint 2013 Dev/Test Lab in the Cloud with Windows Azure Infrastructure Services" by Keith Mayer 15 Jul 2013 6:30 AM over on TechNet.
And I'm currently in "Exercise 5: Configure SharePoint Server 2013 in a Windows Azure VM" steps 16/17.
When I try to create a new server farm following those instructions, the process fails.
The dialog window states:
"Configuring SharePoint Products"
"Performing configuration task 3 of 10" <- gets stuck here for a while and then I get the error below: 
The error from the PSCDiagnostics log is:
Trying to see if port 14387 is free on machine [my sp server]. Min port we will try is 1024, Max port we will try is 49151
05/14/2014 16:43:26 1 INF A SocketException was thrown with SocketError ConnectionRefused
05/14/2014 16:43:26 1 INF Connect has been refused for port 14387, so we will consider this a free port
05/14/2014 16:43:26 1 INF Have not found a free port yet. Number of tries is 1. Min port we will try is 1024, Max port we will try is 49151
05/14/2014 16:43:26 1 INF Adding port 14387 to the exclusion list so it is not chosen again during this run
[snip]
05/14/2014 16:48:22 9 ERR Task configdb has failed with an unknown exception
05/14/2014 16:48:22 9 ERR Exception: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0x80131904): A transport-level error has occurred when receiving results from the server. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - The semaphore timeout period has expired.) ---> System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (0x80004005): The semaphore timeout period has expired
I've turned Windows firewall off on the SP Server, SQL Server and the AD Server (temporarily of course) and I've given user mydomain\sp_farm local and domain administrative rights as well as full rights within the SQL db.
I can ping from/to the SharePoint/SQL servers and get a response using the host name for each (the internal IP's 10.0.0.5/6 respond).  If I use the DNS server names, the pings fail.
However, after the SharePoint wizard fails, I can see on the SQL server that db SharePoint_Config (default name from SP wizard) is created.  So it looks like the SP wizard can connect because the db is being created.
Is this a timeout issue even though the log file shows "SocketError ConnectionRefused"?
Any ideas on how I can resolve this error?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi Gary, 
For this issue, I'm trying to involve someone familiar with this topic to further look at it. 
There might me some time delay. Thank you for your understanding.
Thanks
Victoria Xia
TechNet Community Support