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Production Deployment

This document describes how to deploy Data360 Chat to production (e.g. Azure App Service or similar).

Overview

Production deployment requires:

  1. Backend — FastAPI app behind a production ASGI server (e.g. uvicorn with workers) or reverse proxy
  2. Frontend — Next.js build served by Node or a static host
  3. PostgreSQL — Managed database (e.g. Azure Database for PostgreSQL)
  4. Redis (optional) — For caching and resumable streams
  5. Data360 MCP — Deployed and reachable from the backend
  6. LLM provider — Azure OpenAI or similar, with API keys configured

Environment variables

Backend (critical)

Variable Purpose
ENVIRONMENT=production Enables production checks
POSTGRES_* Database connection
JWT_SECRET_KEY Must not be default — use openssl rand -hex 32
SESSION_SECRET_KEY Dedicated key for session tokens
CORS_ORIGINS Exact frontend origin(s), e.g. https://chat.example.com
COOKIE_DOMAIN Parent domain if frontend/backend share it, e.g. .example.com
NEXTJS_URL Frontend URL for redirects

Frontend

Variable Purpose
NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL Backend URL (browser-accessible)
SERVER_API_URL Backend URL for server-side requests (may differ in Docker)
NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL App URL for redirects and links

CORS and cookies

  • CORS_ORIGINS must list the exact frontend origin(s). Wildcard * is not allowed when allow_credentials=True.
  • COOKIE_DOMAIN — If frontend is at https://chat.example.com and backend at https://api.example.com, set COOKIE_DOMAIN=.example.com so cookies are sent to both.
  • Use Secure and SameSite for cookies in production.

Migrations

Run migrations as part of the deployment or release:

cd backend
uv run alembic upgrade head

Ensure the app user has grants on all tables (see db/migration_utils.py if used).

Health checks

The backend exposes /health for liveness. Configure your load balancer or orchestrator to use it.

Azure App Service

For Azure App Service:

  1. Backend — Deploy as a web app (Python). Set startup command: uvicorn app.main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8001 (or the port Azure provides).
  2. Frontend — Deploy as a Node web app. Build with pnpm build, start with pnpm start.
  3. Application settings — Add all required env vars in the Azure portal.
  4. CORS — Add the frontend URL to the backend's CORS allowed origins.

See also