Quickstart: Use the Azure portal to create a virtual network
This quickstart shows you how to create a virtual network by using the Azure portal. You then create two virtual machines (VMs) in the network, deploy Azure Bastion to securely connect to the VMs from the internet, and communicate privately between the VMs.
A virtual network is the fundamental building block for private networks in Azure. Azure Virtual Network enables Azure resources like VMs to securely communicate with each other and the internet.
Prerequisites
- An Azure account with an active subscription. You can create an account for free.
Sign in to Azure
Sign in to the Azure portal with your Azure account.
Create virtual network and bastion host
The following procedure creates a virtual network with a resource subnet, an Azure Bastion subnet, and an Azure Bastion host.
In the portal, search for and select Virtual networks.
On the Virtual networks page, select Create.
On the Basics tab of Create virtual network, enter or select the following information:
Setting Value Project details Subscription Select your subscription. Resource group Select Create new. Enter test-rg in Name. Select OK. Instance details Name Enter vnet-1. Region Select East US 2. 
Select Next: IP Addresses at the bottom of the page.
In the IP Addresses tab, under IPv4 address space, select the garbage deletion icon to remove any address space that already appears, and then enter 10.0.0.0/16.
Select + Add subnet.
Enter or select the following information in Add subnet:
Setting Value Subnet name Enter subnet-1. Subnet address range Enter 10.0.0.0/24. 
Select Add.
Select Next: Security at the bottom of the page.
On the Security tab, next to BastionHost, select Enable.
Note
Azure Bastion uses your browser to connect to VMs in your virtual network over secure shell (SSH) or remote desktop protocol (RDP) by using their private IP addresses. The VMs don't need public IP addresses, client software, or special configuration. For more information about Azure Bastion, see Azure Bastion.
Enter or select the following information:
Setting Value Bastion name Enter bastion. AzureBastionSubnet address space Enter 10.0.1.0/26. Public IP address Select Create new. Enter public-ip in Name. Select OK. 
Select Review + create at the bottom of the screen, and when validation passes, select Create.
Create virtual machines
The following procedure creates two virtual machines (VMs) named vm-1 and vm-2 in the virtual network.
In the portal, search for and select Virtual machines.
In Virtual machines, select + Create, then Azure virtual machine.
On the Basics tab of Create a virtual machine, enter or select the following information:
Setting Value Project details Subscription Select your subscription. Resource group Select test-rg. Instance details Virtual machine name Enter vm-1. Region Select East US 2. Availability options Select No infrastructure redundancy required. Security type Leave the default of Standard. Image Select Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS - x64 Gen2. VM architecture Leave the default of x64. Size Select a size. Administrator account Authentication type Select Password. Username Enter azureuser. Password Enter a password. Confirm password Reenter the password. Inbound port rules Public inbound ports Select None. Select the Networking tab at the top of the page.
Enter or select the following information in the Networking tab:
Setting Value Network interface Virtual network Select vnet-1. Subnet Select subnet-1 (10.0.0.0/24). Public IP Select None. NIC network security group Select Advanced. Configure network security group Select Create new. Enter nsg-1 for the name. Leave the rest at the defaults and select OK. Leave the rest of the settings at the defaults and select Review + create.
Review the settings and select Create.
Repeat the previous steps to create a second virtual machine with the following settings:
Setting Value Virtual machine name Enter vm-2. Virtual network Select vnet-1. Subnet Select subnet-1 (10.0.0.0/24) Public IP Select None. NIC network security group Select Advanced. Configure network security group Select nsg-1
Note
Virtual machines in a virtual network with a bastion host don't need public IP addresses. Bastion provides the public IP, and the VMs use private IPs to communicate within the network. You can remove the public IPs from any VMs in bastion hosted virtual networks. For more information, see Dissociate a public IP address from an Azure VM.
Note
Azure provides a default outbound access IP for VMs that either aren't assigned a public IP address or are in the back-end pool of an internal basic Azure load balancer. The default outbound access IP mechanism provides an outbound IP address that isn't configurable.
The default outbound access IP is disabled when a public IP address is assigned to the VM, the VM is placed in the back-end pool of a standard load balancer, with or without outbound rules, or if an Azure Virtual Network NAT gateway resource is assigned to the subnet of the VM.
VMs that are created by virtual machine scale sets in flexible orchestration mode don't have default outbound access.
For more information about outbound connections in Azure, see Default outbound access in Azure and Use source network address translation (SNAT) for outbound connections.
Connect to a virtual machine
In the portal, search for and select Virtual machines.
On the Virtual machines page, select vm-1.
In the Overview of vm-1, select Connect.
In the Connect to virtual machine page, select the Bastion tab.
Select Use Bastion.
Enter the username and password you created when you created the VM, and then select Connect.
Communicate between VMs
At the bash prompt for vm-1, enter
ping -c 4 vm-2.You get a reply similar to the following message:
azureuser@vm-1:~$ ping -c 4 vm-2 PING vm-2.3bnkevn3313ujpr5l1kqop4n4d.cx.internal.cloudapp.net (10.0.0.5) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from vm-2.internal.cloudapp.net (10.0.0.5): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.83 ms 64 bytes from vm-2.internal.cloudapp.net (10.0.0.5): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.987 ms 64 bytes from vm-2.internal.cloudapp.net (10.0.0.5): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.864 ms 64 bytes from vm-2.internal.cloudapp.net (10.0.0.5): icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.890 msClose the Bastion connection to VM1.
Repeat the steps in Connect to a virtual machine to connect to VM2.
At the bash prompt for vm-2, enter
ping -c 4 vm-1.You get a reply similar to the following message:
azureuser@vm-2:~$ ping -c 4 vm-1 PING vm-1.3bnkevn3313ujpr5l1kqop4n4d.cx.internal.cloudapp.net (10.0.0.4) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from vm-1.internal.cloudapp.net (10.0.0.4): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.695 ms 64 bytes from vm-1.internal.cloudapp.net (10.0.0.4): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.896 ms 64 bytes from vm-1.internal.cloudapp.net (10.0.0.4): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=3.43 ms 64 bytes from vm-1.internal.cloudapp.net (10.0.0.4): icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.780 msClose the Bastion connection to VM2.
Clean up resources
When you're done using the resources created, you can delete the resource group and all its resources.
In the Azure portal, search for and select Resource groups.
On the Resource groups page, select the test-rg resource group.
On the test-rg page, select Delete resource group.
Enter test-rg in Enter resource group name to confirm deletion and select Delete.
Next steps
In this quickstart, you created a virtual network with two subnets, one containing two VMs and the other for Azure Bastion. You deployed Azure Bastion and used it to connect to the VMs, and securely communicated between the VMs. To learn more about virtual network settings, see Create, change, or delete a virtual network.
Private communication between VMs is unrestricted in a virtual network. Continue to the next article to learn more about configuring different types of VM network communications.
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