Connect To VMs Securetly With Azure Bastion For Free
If you’re running VMs in Azure, you will usually need to either RDP or SSH to the VM to resolve issues, install software or perform other administrative tasks. You can do this by opening the inbound port on your NSG and connecting directly to your VM. This will work, but leaving that port open invites brute-force attacks to compromise your VMs. Cloud services are an easy target for attackers looking for open ports, and it’s not uncommon to see attempts at brute force attacks within hours of a VM being deployed with an open port.
Instead of leaving your RDP or SSH ports open to the internet, you can use the Azure Bastion service. This service provides a bastion host as a service which allows you to connect via HTTPS and then make a secure RDP or SSH connection to your VMs without the need to open insecure ports on your network security groups
Azure Bastion has been around for a while, and is a great solution for providing secure access to VMs, however it’s not cheap. The standard SKU comes in at around $200 per month and even the basic SKU is around $130. For larger deployments this cost is a small amount compared to VM and other costs. However, for smaller environments where there are only a couple of VMs, or developers who are testing things out in an MSDN subscription, this cost can quickly eat up Azure credits. The new developer SKU aims to help with these scenarios.
So the headline item first - Azure Bastion Developer SKU is free. You can deploy this to your vNet and get access to VMs for no additional cost. Given this, there should be no reason to expose your RDP or SSH ports to the internet any more, just spin up a bastion instance. However, there are some limitations on the basic SKU that you should be aware of, and that might push you towards the paid SKU.
If you do hit the limits of the developer SKU, there are several other Bastion SKUs that introduce additional features, at additional costs.
Monthly Cost: $130 approx
Additional features on top of developer SK:
Monthly Cost: $200
Additional features on top of Basic SKU:
Monthly Cost: $325
Additional features on top of Standard SKU: