Heroku | Upgrade Database from Dev to Basic
Heroku is a great tool for developers. It allows you to easily deploy applications without having to worry about setting up servers, networking, hosting, etc. Essentially, you don’t need to be an IT pro to get your app up on the web so others can use it.
Why Upgrade?
There comes a time when you will deploy an application that requires a database to persist data. I ran into this very recently when I maxed out the free database provided to developers. Heroku allows you to create a free Heroku-Dev database that you can persist up to 10,000 rows. My app currently pulls in data from an external source and persists this info into the database so I reached the 10,000 row limit quickly. It was time to upgrade to the next tier.
Luckily, Heroku offers many plans but the next logical one for me was to upgrade to Heroku Basic. This tier allows 10,000,000 rows! Heroku has a guide that it offers but unfortunately, it doesn’t capture how to exactly to upgrade to the Basic plan. It offers an explanation for their more Enterprise plans, but doesn’t clearly outline how to just make the next jump.
How Do I Upgrade?
After some researching online with some trial and error, I was able to move from Heroku-Dev to Heroku-Basic.
Provision a Heroku-Basic Postgres Database.
- Log into your Heroku account and click into your app
- Navigate to the Resources tab
- Click on the “Find more add-ons” button
- In the new window, click on Data Stores, then find and click on Heroku Postgres
- Click on Install Heroku Postgres
- Select your Application from the dropdown
- Select the Plan Name, here you will select Heroku Basic, which at the time of this post is $9.00 per month
- Then click on the Provision button
This will take a short amount of time to provision. In the mean time, open up your Terminal and navigate to your app’s folder repo.
If you run heroku pg:info you will now see the new database there.
Dev/espera/espera-app master ✔
▶ heroku pg:info
=== DATABASE_URL
Plan: Hobby-dev
Status: Available
Connections: 1/20
PG Version: 10.1
Created: 2017-12-21 00:33 UTC
Data Size: 13.0 MB
Tables: 4
Rows: 14194/10000 (Write access revoked)
Fork/Follow: Unsupported
Rollback: Unsupported
Continuous Protection: Off
Add-on: postgresql-octagonal-19000
=== HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_GOLD_URL
Plan: Hobby-basic
Status: Available
Connections: 0/20
PG Version: 10.2
Created: 2018-02-13 18:33 UTC
Data Size: 7.6 MB
Tables: 0
Rows: 0/10000000 (In compliance)
Fork/Follow: Unsupported
Rollback: Unsupported
Continuous Protection: Off
Add-on: postgresql-perpendicular-27024
As you can see, my original Hobby-dev database is called DATABASE_URL and my new Hobby-basic database is called HEROKU_POSTGRESSQL_GOLD_URL
At this point, you can very easily follow the Heroku provided guide: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/upgrading-heroku-postgres-databases. You can also continue reading this post since you are already here and I give you the real deal.
Copying your data to new databse
I went ahead and used the pg:copy method.
Maintenance Mode
My next step was to put my app into Maintenance Mode. I did this by running heroku maintenance:on
Dev/espera/espera-app master ✔
▶ heroku maintenance:on
Enabling maintenance mode for ⬢ espera-app... done
Copy the Data
The next step is to copy all the data from my original Dev database over to the new Basic database. I did this by running the pg:copy command. This takes the name of your Dev and new Basic databases. You can find these names by running pg:info. In my case, the original database was simply called DATABASE_URL and the new one was HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_GOLD_URL.
I successfully ran pg:copy, and entered my app name to verify and proceed, as you can see below:
Dev/espera/espera-app master ✔
▶ heroku pg:copy DATABASE_URL HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_GOLD_URL --app espera-app
▸ WARNING: Destructive action
▸ This command will remove all data from GOLD
▸ Data from DATABASE will then be transferred to
▸ GOLD
▸ To proceed, type espera-app or re-run this
▸ command with --confirm espera-app
> espera-app
Starting copy of DATABASE to GOLD... done
Copying... done
Promote Your New Database
After this completes, you will need to promote your new Basic database. You can do this by running heroku pg:promote <name of new basic database>.
Dev/espera/espera-app master ✔
▶ heroku pg:promote HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_GOLD_URL
Ensuring an alternate alias for existing DATABASE_URL... HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_BLUE_URL
Promoting postgresql-perpendicular-27024 to DATABASE_URL on ⬢ espera-app... done
Turn off Maintenance Mode
Once this completed, you can turn off Maintenance mode by running heroku maintenance:off
Dev/espera/espera-app master ✔
▶ heroku maintenance:off
Disabling maintenance mode for ⬢ espera-app... done
You can then run heroku pg:info to see the updated status of your databases. You can see the GOLD database is now at the top and primary.
Dev/espera/espera-app master ✔
▶ heroku pg:info
=== DATABASE_URL, HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_GOLD_URL
Plan: Hobby-basic
Status: Available
Connections: 1/20
PG Version: 10.2
Created: 2018-02-13 18:33 UTC
Data Size: 12.8 MB
Tables: 4
Rows: 23381/10000000 (In compliance)
Fork/Follow: Unsupported
Rollback: Unsupported
Continuous Protection: Off
Add-on: postgresql-perpendicular-27024
=== HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_BLUE_URL
Plan: Hobby-dev
Status: Available
Connections: 2/20
PG Version: 10.1
Created: 2017-12-21 00:33 UTC
Data Size: 13.0 MB
Tables: 4
Rows: 14146/10000 (Write access revoked)
Fork/Follow: Unsupported
Rollback: Unsupported
Continuous Protection: Off
Add-on: postgresql-octagonal-19000
Deprovision Old Database
The final step is to deprovision (destroy) your old primary database. You can do that by running heroku addons:destroy <original dev database name>
Dev/espera/espera-app master ✔
▶ heroku addons:destroy HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_BLUE_URL
▸ WARNING: Destructive Action
▸ This command will affect the app espera-app
▸ To proceed, type espera-app or re-run this
▸ command with --confirm espera-app
> espera-app
Destroying postgresql-octagonal-19000 on ⬢ espera-app... done
Woot You Did It!!!!
Success!!! If you run heroku pg:info you will notice that your Heroku-dev database is now gone.