Deploying the Epic Book Web App on Azure: End-to-End, Production-Ready Architecture

I just wrapped up one of my most comprehensive cloud engineering projects: designing, securing, and deploying a full-stack Epic Book web app on Microsoft Azure using real production patterns. This project pushed me far beyond “just deploy a VM.” I had to think like an architect: networking, security, scalability, and infrastructure design all mattered as much as the code itself. Frontend Layer I built a React frontend that communicates with an Express.js API over HTTPS. The backend runs on port 5000, giving me a clean separation between UI, API, and infrastructure. Application Layer (Public Subnet) I deployed a Node.js + Nginx web server on Ubuntu 22.04, placed behind an Azure Load Balancer with a public IP. To keep things secure, I locked down the Web NSG to ports 80 and 22 only and assigned a dedicated public IP + NIC for full network control. Nginx handles reverse proxying to Node.js, improving performance and security. Database Layer (Private Subnet) For the database, I used Azure