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Deploy Bastion using Azure PowerShell

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This article shows you how to deploy Azure Bastion with the Standard SKU using PowerShell. Azure Bastion is a PaaS service that's maintained for you, not a bastion host that you install on your VM and maintain yourself. An Azure Bastion deployment is per virtual network, not per subscription/account or virtual machine. For more information about Azure Bastion, see What is Azure Bastion?

Once you deploy Bastion to your virtual network, you can connect to your VMs via private IP address. This seamless RDP/SSH experience is available to all the VMs in the same virtual network. If your VM has a public IP address that you don't need for anything else, you can remove it.

Diagram showing Azure Bastion architecture.

In this article, you create a virtual network (if you don't already have one), deploy Azure Bastion using PowerShell, and connect to a VM. You can also deploy Bastion by using the following other methods:

Note

The use of Azure Bastion with Azure Private DNS Zones is supported. However, there are certain restrictions. See the Bastion FAQ for more information.

Before beginning

Verify that you have an Azure subscription. If you don't already have an Azure subscription, you can activate your MSDN subscriber benefits or sign up for a free account.

PowerShell

This article uses PowerShell cmdlets. To run the cmdlets, you can use Azure Cloud Shell. Cloud Shell is a free interactive shell that you can use to run the steps in this article. It has common Azure tools preinstalled and configured to use with your account.

To open Cloud Shell, just select Open Cloudshell from the upper-right corner of a code block. You can also open Cloud Shell on a separate browser tab by going to https://shell.azure.com/powershell. Select Copy to copy the blocks of code, paste them into Cloud Shell, and select the Enter key to run them.

You can also install and run the Azure PowerShell cmdlets locally on your computer. PowerShell cmdlets are updated frequently. If you haven't installed the latest version, the values specified in the instructions may fail. To find the versions of Azure PowerShell installed on your computer, use the Get-Module -ListAvailable Az cmdlet. To install or update, see Install the Azure PowerShell module.

Example values

You can use the following example values when creating this configuration, or you can substitute your own.

Basic VNet and VM values:

Name Value
Virtual machine TestVM
Resource group TestRG1
Region East US
Virtual network VNet1
Address space 10.1.0.0/16
Subnets FrontEnd: 10.1.0.0/24

Azure Bastion values:

Name Value
Name VNet1-bastion
Subnet Name FrontEnd
Subnet Name AzureBastionSubnet
AzureBastionSubnet addresses A subnet within your VNet address space with a subnet mask /26 or larger.
For example, 10.1.1.0/26.
Tier/SKU Standard
Public IP address Create new
Public IP address name VNet1-ip
Public IP address SKU Standard
Assignment Static

Deploy Bastion

This section helps you create a virtual network, subnets, and deploy Azure Bastion using Azure PowerShell.

Important

Hourly pricing starts from the moment Bastion is deployed, regardless of outbound data usage. For more information, see Pricing and SKUs. If you're deploying Bastion as part of a tutorial or test, we recommend that you delete this resource once you've finished using it.

  1. Create a resource group, a virtual network, and a front end subnet to which you'll deploy the VMs that you'll connect to via Bastion. If you're running PowerShell locally, open your PowerShell console with elevated privileges and connect to Azure using the Connect-AzAccount command.

    New-AzResourceGroup -Name TestRG1 -Location EastUS ` 
$frontendSubnet = New-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name FrontEnd `
-AddressPrefix "10.1.0.0/24" ` 
$virtualNetwork = New-AzVirtualNetwork `
-Name TestVNet1 -ResourceGroupName TestRG1 `
-Location EastUS -AddressPrefix "10.1.0.0/16" `
-Subnet $frontendSubnet ` 
$virtualNetwork | Set-AzVirtualNetwork

  2. Configure and set the Azure Bastion subnet for your virtual network. This subnet is reserved exclusively for Azure Bastion resources. You must create this subnet using the name value AzureBastionSubnet. This value lets Azure know which subnet to deploy the Bastion resources to. The example in the following section helps you add an Azure Bastion subnet to an existing VNet.

    • The smallest subnet AzureBastionSubnet size you can create is /26. We recommend that you create a /26 or larger size to accommodate host scaling.
    • Create the AzureBastionSubnet without any route tables or delegations.
    • If you use Network Security Groups on the AzureBastionSubnet, refer to the Work with NSGs article.

    Set the variable.

    $vnet = Get-AzVirtualNetwork -Name "TestVNet1" -ResourceGroupName "TestRG1"

    Add the subnet.

    Add-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig `
-Name "AzureBastionSubnet" -VirtualNetwork $vnet `
-AddressPrefix "10.1.1.0/26" | Set-AzVirtualNetwork

  3. Create a public IP address for Azure Bastion. The public IP is the public IP address of the Bastion resource on which RDP/SSH will be accessed (over port 443). The public IP address must be in the same region as the Bastion resource you're creating.

    $publicip = New-AzPublicIpAddress -ResourceGroupName "TestRG1" `
-name "VNet1-ip" -location "EastUS" `
-AllocationMethod Static -Sku Standard

  4. Create a new Azure Bastion resource in the AzureBastionSubnet using the New-AzBastion command. The following example uses the Basic SKU. However, you can also deploy Bastion using the Standard SKU by changing the -Sku value to "Standard". The Standard SKU lets you configure more Bastion features and connect to VMs using more connection types. For more information, see Bastion SKUs.

    New-AzBastion -ResourceGroupName "TestRG1" -Name "VNet1-bastion" `
-PublicIpAddressRgName "TestRG1" -PublicIpAddressName "VNet1-ip" `
-VirtualNetworkRgName "TestRG1" -VirtualNetworkName "TestVNet1" `
-Sku "Basic"

  5. It takes about 10 minutes for the Bastion resources to deploy. You can create a VM in the next section while Bastion deploys to your virtual network.

Create a VM

You can create a VM using the Quickstart: Create a VM using PowerShell or Quickstart: Create a VM using the portal articles. Be sure you deploy the VM to the same virtual network to which you deployed Bastion. The VM you create in this section isn't a part of the Bastion configuration and doesn't become a bastion host. You connect to this VM later in this tutorial via Bastion.

The following required roles for your resources.

  • Required VM roles:

    • Reader role on the virtual machine.
    • Reader role on the NIC with private IP of the virtual machine.

  • Required inbound ports:

    • For Windows VMS - RDP (3389)
    • For Linux VMs - SSH (22)

Connect to a VM

You can use the Connection steps in the following section to connect to your VM. You can also use any of the following articles to connect to a VM. Some connection types require the Bastion Standard SKU.

Connection steps

  1. In the Azure portal, go to the virtual machine to which you want to connect.

  2. At the top of the page, select Connect->Bastion to go to the Bastion page. You can also go to the Bastion page using the left menu.

  3. The options available on the Bastion page are dependant on the Bastion SKU tier. If you're using the Basic SKU, you connect to a Windows computer using RDP and port 3389, and to a Linux computer using SSH and port 22. You don't have options to change the port number or the protocol. However, you can change the keyboard language for RDP by expanding Connection Settings.

    Screenshot of Bastion connection page.

    If you're using the Standard SKU, you have more connection protocol and port options available. Expand Connection Settings to see the options. Typically, unless you have configured different settings for your VM, you connect to a Windows computer using RDP and port 3389, and to a Linux computer using SSH and port 22.

    Screenshot of connection settings expanded.

  4. Select the Authentication Type from the dropdown. The protocol determines the available authentication types. Complete the required authentication values.

    Screenshot showing authentication type dropdown.

  5. To open the VM session in a new browser tab, leave Open in a new browser tab selected.

  6. Click Connect to connect to the VM.

  7. The connection to this virtual machine, via Bastion, will open directly in the Azure portal (over HTML5) using port 443 and the Bastion service.

    • When you connect, the desktop of the VM will look different than the example screenshot.
    • Using keyboard shortcut keys while connected to a VM may not result in the same behavior as shortcut keys on a local computer. For example, when connected to a Windows VM from a Windows client, CTRL+ALT+END is the keyboard shortcut for CTRL+ALT+Delete on a local computer. To do this from a Mac while connected to a Windows VM, the keyboard shortcut is Fn+CTRL+ALT+Backspace.

    Screenshot of Connect using port 443.

To enable audio output

You can enable remote audio output for your VM. Some VMs automatically enable this setting, others require you to enable audio settings manually. The settings are changed on the VM itself. Your Bastion deployment doesn't need any special configuration settings to enable remote audio output.

Note

Audio output takes up bandwidth on your internet connection.

To enable remote audio output on a Windows VM:

  1. After you're connected to the VM, on the right-hand bottom corner of the toolbar, you'll see an audio button.
  2. Right-click the audio button and select "Sounds".
  3. A pop-up appears asking if you would like to enable the Windows Audio Service. Select "Yes". You can configure more audio options in Sound preferences.
  4. To verify sound output, hover your mouse over the audio button on the toolbar.

Remove VM public IP address

Azure Bastion doesn't use the public IP address to connect to the client VM. If you don't need the public IP address for your VM, you can disassociate the public IP address. See Dissociate a public IP address from an Azure VM.

Next steps