Thank you so much! Once I changed this to Debug I was able to track down the issue.
It doesn't seem to matter whether I create an tiered application or single layer. When deployed to IIS all that happens is a 504 Gateway Timeout. I've deployed a single layer MVC application. 504 Gateway Timeout I've deployed an auth server from the tiered template. 504 Gateway Timeout
I've verified that a regular .Net 7 application works perfectly fine when deployed to the same site in IIS.
I've also successfully run the application locally, pointed to the same database instance and have no problems there.
There must be something that I'm missing, for a release/production deployment to IIS. Deployment guides would go a long way toward eliminating a lot of guesswork when it comes to getting the different templates deployed.