Deploy Bastion using Azure CLI

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This article shows you how to deploy Azure Bastion using CLI. 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 CLI, 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 restrictions. For more information, see the Azure Bastion FAQ.

Before beginning

Azure subscription

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.

Azure CLI

Deploy Bastion

This section helps you deploy Azure Bastion using Azure CLI.

Important

Hourly pricing starts from the moment that 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 after you finish using it.

  1. If you don't already have a virtual network, create a resource group and a virtual network using az group create and az network vnet create.

    az group create --name TestRG1 --location chinaeast2

    az network vnet create --resource-group TestRG1 --name VNet1 --address-prefix 10.1.0.0/16 --subnet-name default --subnet-prefix 10.1.0.0/24

  2. Use az network vnet subnet create to create the subnet to which Bastion will be deployed. The subnet you create must be named AzureBastionSubnet. This subnet is reserve exclusively for Azure Bastion resources. If you don't have a subnet with the naming value AzureBastionSubnet, Bastion won't deploy.

    • 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.
    az network vnet subnet create --name AzureBastionSubnet --resource-group TestRG1 --vnet-name VNet1 --address-prefix 10.1.1.0/26

  3. Create a public IP address for Azure Bastion. The public IP is the public IP address 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. For this reason, pay particular attention to the --location value that you specify.

    az network public-ip create --resource-group TestRG1 --name VNet1-ip --sku Standard --location chinaeast2

  4. Use az network bastion create to create a new Azure Bastion resource for your virtual network. It takes about 10 minutes for the Bastion resource to create and deploy.

    The following example deploys Bastion using the Basic SKU tier. The SKU determines the features that your Bastion deployment supports. You can also deploy using the Standard SKU. If you don't specify a SKU in your command, the SKU defaults to Standard. For more information, see Bastion SKUs.

    az network bastion create --name VNet1-bastion --public-ip-address VNet1-ip --resource-group TestRG1 --vnet-name VNet1 --location chinaeast2 --sku Basic

Connect to a VM

If you don't already have VMs in your virtual network, you can create a VM using Quickstart: Create a Windows VM, or Quickstart: Create a Linux VM

You can use any of the following articles, or the steps in the following section, to help you connect to a VM. Some connection types require the Bastion Standard SKU.

Connect using the portal

The following steps walk you through one type of connection using the Azure portal.

  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