Web Portal - Azure architecture best practice

Start with the Core structure: a web portal hosted on Azure App Service, backed by Azure SQL Database. For high availability and disaster recovery, deploy across multiple regions—like UK South as active and UK West as failover, just like in your diagram. Use Azure Front Door to route traffic intelligently and provide global load balancing, SSL termination, and DDoS protection.

Security should be baked in at every layer. Use Microsoft Entra ID for authentication and role-based access control. Enable Managed Identity so your App Service can securely access Azure SQL without storing credentials. Protect your SQL backend with private endpoints and firewall rules, and isolate your tiers using separate virtual networks with NSGs to control traffic flow.

For scalability, leverage autoscaling on App Service and consider using Azure Redis Cache to offload session state or frequently accessed data. If your portal serves static content, integrate Azure CDN to reduce latency and improve performance globally.

Monitoring and diagnostics are essential. Use Azure Monitor and Application Insights to track performance, detect anomalies, and log user behavior. This helps you proactively respond to issues before they impact users.

On the data side, enable geo-replication for Azure SQL Database to ensure redundancy. You can use active geo-replication for near real-time sync or failover groups for automatic redirection during outages. Make sure backups are configured and tested regularly.