This 20-Minute Tech Talk, delivered by Thomas Mitchell, provides a comprehensive overview of Azure Bastion, an essential service in Azure’s networking suite designed to facilitate secure remote access to Azure virtual machines (VMs). The talk begins by introducing Azure Bastion as a fully managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering, which crucially eliminates the need for public IP addresses on VMs by enabling secure Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and Secure Shell (SSH) access directly within the Azure portal. It highlights the benefits and features of Azure Bastion, emphasizing its role in streamlining connectivity through the Azure Portal or local RDP/SSH clients, all secured via TLS encryption, thereby simplifying the connection process and enhancing security.

The presentation delves into the architecture of Azure Bastion, which serves as a secure, private link to VMs, avoiding exposure through public IP addresses. This architecture is integral in increasing security and simplifying access. The security aspects are also covered, with a focus on how Azure Bastion reduces the threat surface by keeping RDP and SSH ports off the internet, thus maintaining a strong security posture in the cloud environment.

Mitchell walks the audience through the setup process of Azure Bastion, including configuring Azure virtual networks, assigning public IP addresses, and ensuring VNet peering. The talk further explores how Azure Bastion integrates with VNet peering to enhance network management and security, allowing a single Bastion host in one VNet to connect to VMs in a peered VNet. Different deployment strategies such as hub-and-spoke or full-mesh topologies are discussed, underscoring that the deployment of Azure Bastion is specific to each virtual network.

The talk concludes by positioning Azure Bastion as a secure, manageable, and scalable solution for remote access within Azure, ultimately improving management efficiency and security. The session aims to impart enough knowledge for participants to confidently discuss Azure Bastion, though it stops short of making them experts on the topic.

Click here for more 20-Minute Tech Talks!