Azure Bastion is a fully managed service that provides secure RDP and SSH access to virtual machines without public IPs, enhancing security by eliminating exposure to the internet. With the native Windows client, you can connect directly using the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) app, offering a familiar, efficient, and secure way to manage VMs. In this post, we discuss the benefits of using the Bastion native client and how to implement it to connect to Windows servers.

Using the Native Client for Azure Bastion, you can seamlessly upload and download files during your session. However, this feature requires the Azure CLI to be installed on your local machine. Once installed, you can connect to the target virtual machine using specific CLI commands.

It's important to note that the Native Client functionality is only available with the Standard tier of Azure Bastion. Here's how to implement and leverage this feature effectively.

Enable Native Client support

When deploying Azure Bastion, you can enable Native Client support during the deployment process. If Bastion is already deployed, simply navigate to the Configuration settings and select the option for Native Client support to enable it.

Note – Native Client functionality is only available with the Standard tier of Azure Bastio.n

Install and prepare Azure CLI

To connect to a VM using the Bastion native client, you need to install the Azure CLI and configure it to run the RDP command.

1. Download and install the latest version of Azure CLI on your local machine.
   https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/install-azure-cli-windows?tabs=azure-cli#install-or-update
   
   
   
2. After installing Azure CLI, you need to update the bastion extension.
   Az extension update –name bastion
   
   
   
3. If the extension is not installed, you can install it using the following command:
   Az extension add –name bastion
   
   
   
   
   
   

Connect to Target VM using Native Client

1. Login to Azure tenant using – az login. If you want to, set the correct subscription by - az account set --subscription "<subscription ID>"
   
   
   
   
2. Find the resource ID of the target VM. Then, copy the VM from the Azure portal's JSON view.
   
   
   
   
   
3. Use the following command to connect to the target VM
   az network bastion rdp --name "<BastionName>" --resource-group "<ResourceGroupName>" --target-resource-id "<VMResourceId>"
   
   

   <BastionName> - Name of the bastion instance

   <ResourceGroupName> - resource group name of the bastion instance

   <VMResourceId> – resource ID of the VM (Step2)
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

4. You will see an RDP prompt requesting the authentication to connect

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