Deploy Bastion using Azure PowerShell

This article shows you how to deploy Azure Bastion 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.

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. The examples show Bastion deployed using the Standard SKU tier, but you can use a different Bastion SKU, depending on the features you'd like to use. For more information, see Bastion SKUs.

You can also deploy Bastion by using the following other methods:

• Azure portal
• Azure CLI
• Quickstart - deploy with default settings

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 trial subscription.

PowerShell

You can 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.

Example VNet and VM values:

Name	Value
Virtual machine	TestVM
Resource group	TestRG1
Region	China East 2
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 virtual network 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.

1. Create a resource group, a virtual network, and a front end subnet to which you 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 -Environment AzureChinaCloud command.

   New-AzResourceGroup -Name TestRG1 -Location ChinaEast2 ` 
   $frontendSubnet = New-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name FrontEnd `
   -AddressPrefix "10.1.0.0/24" ` 
   $virtualNetwork = New-AzVirtualNetwork `
   -Name TestVNet1 -ResourceGroupName TestRG1 `
   -Location ChinaEast2 -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.
     • For more information about scaling, see Configuration settings - Host scaling.
     • For more information about settings, see Configuration settings - AzureBastionSubnet.
   • 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 "ChinaEast2" `
   -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 a different SKU by changing the -Sku value. The SKU you select determines the 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.

• Connect to a Windows VM
  • RDP
  • SSH
• Connect to a Linux VM
  • SSH
• Connect to a scale set
• Connect via IP address
• Connect from a native client
  • Windows client
  • Linux/SSH client

Connection steps

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

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

3. The options available on the Bastion pane depend on the Bastion SKU. If you're using the Basic SKU, you connect to a Windows computer by using RDP and port 3389. Also for the Basic SKU, you connect to a Linux computer by 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.

   

   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 configure different settings for your VM, you connect to a Windows computer by using RDP and port 3389. You connect to a Linux computer by using SSH and port 22.

   

4. For Authentication Type, select from the dropdown list. The protocol determines the available authentication types. Complete the required authentication values.

   

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

6. Select Connect to connect to the VM.

7. Confirm that the connection to the virtual machine opens directly in the Azure portal (over HTML5) by using port 443 and the Bastion service.

   

   Note

   When you connect, the desktop of the VM will look different from the example screenshot.

Using keyboard shortcut keys while you're connected to a VM might not result in the same behavior as shortcut keys on a local computer. For example, when you're 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 you're connected to a Windows VM, the keyboard shortcut is Fn+Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.

To enable audio output

You can enable remote audio output for your VM. Some VMs automatically enable this setting, whereas 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.

To enable remote audio output on a Windows VM:

1. After you're connected to the VM, an audio button appears on the lower-right corner of the toolbar. Right-click the audio button, and then select Sounds.
2. A pop-up message asks if you want to enable the Windows Audio Service. Select Yes. You can configure more audio options in Sound preferences.
3. To verify sound output, hover 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

• To use Network Security Groups with the Azure Bastion subnet, see Work with NSGs.
• To understand VNet peering, see Virtual Network peering and Azure Bastion.