What networking approach should be recommended to allow developers to connect to Azure VMs over SSL while preventing public IP exposure?

The selection of a hub and spoke networking model is indeed a valid approach for organizing network resources within Azure, but it may not directly address the specific requirements of secure connections to Azure VMs over SSL while preventing public IP exposure.

A more effective solution in this context is to implement Azure Bastion. Azure Bastion is a fully managed PaaS that provides secure and seamless RDP and SSH connectivity to VMs in Azure without exposing them to the public internet. With Azure Bastion, developers can connect to their Azure VMs securely over SSL, as it operates via the Azure portal using an HTML5 client.

The advantage of Azure Bastion is that it mitigates the risks associated with public IP addresses since the VMs do not need to be assigned a public IP. Instead, access is done through the Azure Bastion service, which acts as a secure bridge to the VMs.

Utilizing a VPN gateway could also be a potential solution for secure connections without exposing public IPs, but it might involve more configuration and management overhead compared to Azure Bastion, which is specifically designed for this type of seamless RDP/SSH access. Meanwhile, point-to-site VPNs provide secure connections but may not offer the same level of integration and ease of