Hands-on Azure Learning: Two-Tier Application Deployment
 
As a part of DMI COHORT2, this week Assignment was building a Two-Tier Application and Deploying on Azure

Project overview

As part of my ongoing DevOps and cloud learning path, I recently deployed a simple two-tier application on Microsoft Azure: a web frontend running on a virtual machine, connected to a managed MySQL database in the backend. The objective was to practice designing a basic yet realistic architecture where the application and database are separated into different tiers for better security and scalability.

​Architecture and components

The solution followed a classic two-tier pattern: an application server in the presentation tier and a database server in the data tier. The web tier was hosted on an Azure Virtual Machine with a Linux distribution, web server (Apache/Nginx), PHP runtime, and application files, while the database tier used Azure’s managed MySQL service to offload patching and maintenance.

​Network security was a key focus. I allowed HTTP traffic only to the web server and locked down the database so that it accepts connections only from the application VM’s private network, following recommended patterns for multi-tier applications on Azure.

​Implementation steps

To complete the deployment, I:

• Provisioned and configured the web VM, installed the web server, PHP stack, and uploaded the application code.
• ​Created the Azure Database for MySQL instance, set up database credentials, and configured the connection string on the application side.
• ​Tuned NSG/security rules to control inbound HTTP traffic and restrict database access to the application tier only.
• ​Performed end-to-end testing by accessing the app via the VM’s public endpoint and validating successful reads/writes to the database.

​Key learnings

This project helped me deepen my understanding of how real-world two-tier applications run on Azure Virtual Machines and managed databases. I gained confidence in configuring infrastructure, securing communication between tiers, and validating deployments from both the OS and application perspectives.

​About DevOps Micro Internship (DMI) & CloudAdvisory

DevOps Micro Internship (DMI) is a free, project-based DevOps learning program by Pravin Mishra (CloudAdvisory). It helps students, job-seekers, and working professionals gain real-world DevOps skills through weekly assignments, projects, and community support.

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