Access Windows VMs over SSL without Public IPs Using Azure Bastion

Pluralsight Hands-On Lab — Azure Networking & Security

Access Windows VMs over SSL without Public IPs Using Azure Bastion

Pluralsight Hands-On Lab — Networking

At a Glance

Platform	Pluralsight
Category	Azure Networking & Security
Lab Type	Guided + Challenge Mode
Environment	Azure Portal, Azure Bastion, Windows VM
Completed	2026

Overview

Azure Bastion provides browser-based RDP and SSH access to virtual machines over SSL without requiring a public IP address on the VM or opening port 3389 to the internet. In this lab, I was given a scenario where corporate policy blocked outbound port 3389 and mandated that Windows VMs have no public internet exposure. I deployed Azure Bastion by creating the required AzureBastionSubnet, provisioning the Bastion service with a dedicated public IP, and connecting to a Windows VM entirely through the Azure portal over HTTPS.

What I Did

Navigated to the lab virtual network and created a dedicated subnet named AzureBastionSubnet with a /26 address range — the exact name and minimum size required by Azure Bastion
Created an Azure Bastion service (Bastion1) from the marketplace, associating it with lab-VNet1, the AzureBastionSubnet, and a new public IP (pip-Bastion-01)
Waited for the Bastion deployment to complete, then navigated to the winVM virtual machine in the resource group
Connected to winVM using Connect via Bastion from the portal, entering the lab credentials and connecting through the browser over SSL — no RDP client, no public IP, and no port 3389 required

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