When you are getting the following exception in your Azure development , you need to run the CloudStorageAccount.SetConfigurationSettingPublisher before retriving any settings information.

To fix the exception, you need to add the following code before retrieving any settings information.

CloudStorageAccount.SetConfigurationSettingPublisher((configName, configSetter) =>
{
string connectionString;
if (RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable)
{
connectionString = RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(configName);
}
else
{
connectionString = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[configName];
}
configSetter(connectionString);
});