Microsoft states that Azure Bastion is a fully managed PaaS service that provides "secure and seamless RDP /SSH connectivity to your virtual machines directly in the Azure portal over SSL" and "eliminates the need to expose public IP addresses on your VMs." With Bastion, users open the VM blade in the Azure portal and launch an in-browser RDP or SSH session; no separate RDP or SSH client is required because the session is proxied through Bastion using HTTPS/TLS. The platform is designed to be agentless and browser-based, providing connectivity without VPN or jump hosts and enforcing least-exposure by keeping management ports off the internet. While traditional tools such as Remote Desktop Connection or an SSH client are common for direct access, Bastion's prescribed access method in Microsoft guidance is to initiate the session from the Azure portal. PowerShell remoting is unrelated to Bastion's web-based brokering. Therefore, to connect to an Azure virtual machine by using Azure Bastion, you use the Azure portal.