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Also I might be missing something basic, but there doesn't seem to be a way to provide virtual machine resources as backends

When in doubt, go to the ARM reference as that the source of truth.  Pulumi a wrapper for the ARM API.  For the virtual machine, try configuring the load balancer on the NIC.

<https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/templates/microsoft.network/networkinterfaces?tabs=bicep|https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/templates/microsoft.network/networkinterfaces?tabs=bicep>

<https://www.pulumi.com/registry/packages/azure-native/api-docs/network/networkinterface/#networkinterfaceipconfiguration|https://www.pulumi.com/registry/packages/azure-native/api-docs/network/networkinterface/#networkinterfaceipconfiguration>