Introduction
Tools and techniques such as Cloud Shell, Azure Bastion, and the just-in-time (JIT) feature of Azure Security Center allow you to remotely administer and manage Windows Server virtual machines (VMs).
Scenario
Contoso is a medium-size financial services company in London with a branch office in New York. Most of its compute environment runs on-premises on Windows Server. This includes virtualized workloads on Windows Server 2012 R2 hosts. Contoso IT staff are in the process of migrating Contoso servers to Windows Server 2019.
Contoso’s IT director realizes that Contoso has an outdated operational model with limited automation and reliance on dated technology. The Contoso IT Engineering team has started exploring Azure capabilities. They want to determine whether Microsoft Azure services might assist with modernizing the current operational model through automation and virtualization.
As part of the initial design, the Contoso IT team asked you, their lead system engineer and server administrator, to set up a proof of concept environment. This environment must verify whether Azure services can help to modernize the IT infrastructure and meet business goals.
The IT operations staff at Contoso need to know how they can remotely manage Windows infrastructure as a service (IaaS) VMs. They also want to be sure that it's possible to restrict administrative connections to those Windows Azure IaaS VMs.
This module describes available remote administration tools and how to select the appropriate tools. You'll also learn to use Azure Bastion to secure management connections to Windows Azure IaaS VMs. Finally, you'll learn to configure JIT VM access to restrict connections.
By the end of this module you’ll be able to select and use suitable tools and techniques to remotely manage Windows IaaS VMs, and restrict administrative connections to those VMs.
Learning objectives
After completing this module, you'll be able to:
- Select appropriate remote administration tools.
- Secure management connections to Windows Azure IaaS VMs with Azure Bastion.
- Configure JIT VM access.
Prerequisites
In order to get the best learning experience from this module, you should have knowledge and experience of:
- Managing Windows Server operating system and Windows Server workloads in on-premises scenarios, including Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), Domain Name System (DNS), the Distributed File System (DFS), Microsoft Hyper-V, and file and storage services
- Common Windows Server management tools
- Core Microsoft compute, storage, networking, and virtualization technologies
- On-premises resiliency Windows Server-based compute and storage technologies
- Implementing and managing IaaS services in Azure
- Microsoft Entra ID
- Security-related technologies (firewalls, encryption, multi-factor authentication)
- Windows PowerShell scripting
- Automation and monitoring