GRAX

This add-on is operated by GRAX

Salesforce Data Lakehouse for Analytics, AI, ML, and more!

GRAX

Last updated October 17, 2024

GRAX Data Lake and Data Lakehouse deployed to Heroku lets you collect, protect, and reuse your Salesforce history. The GRAX platform includes Salesforce backup, archiving, metadata backup, sandbox seeding, data lake, and data lakehouse.

Heroku Deployment

GRAX deploys and runs 100% on Heroku in minutes. GRAX automatically upgrades itself nightly in alignment with Heroku daily restarts. Follow the production, development, and free trial steps to deploy GRAX on Heroku. In less than 10 minutes you’re collecting your Salesforce history, data lake, and data lakehouse.

GRAX Trial

To quickly and easily deploy a GRAX trial on Heroku click the “Deploy to Heroku” button below:

Deploy to Heroku

This will provision the following resources:

  1. A Heroku dyno with the GRAX application
  2. A Heroku Postgresql Add-on for GRAX application state
  3. An S3 Storage Add-on for CRM data
  4. A GRAX Add-on to setup the datalake

GRAX Enterprise

To quickly and easily deploy GRAX enterprise on Heroku, you can follow these steps:

  1. Provision the add-on
  2. Connect to Salesforce
  3. Connect to Heroku
  4. Connect to Cloud Storage
  5. Turn on Auto Backup

Provisioning the Add-on

Billing Application

GRAX deployments are associated with a Salesforce org. Heroku add-ons are always provisioned within the context of a Heroku application. To avoid tying your GRAX deployment to a particular Heroku application that you can change, we recommend creating an empty application to use for provisioning GRAX.

$ heroku create grax-license
Creating ⬢ grax-license... done

Provisioning GRAX

Provision GRAX to a Heroku application via the CLI:

Reference the GRAX Elements Page for a list of available plans and regions.

$ heroku addons:add grax -a grax-license
Creating grax on ⬢ grax-license... free

Connect to Salesforce

GRAX is fully hosted in your own infrastructure. It’s immediately ready to connect to Salesforce via OAuth login. Follow our guide for connecting to Salesforce.

You can log in by visiting GRAX Platform or through the add-on SSO:

$ heroku addons:open grax -a grax-license
Opening https://addons-sso.heroku.com/apps/...

Connect to Heroku

After logging in, you can connect to Heroku. We require Heroku API keys to maintain a Platform connection and manage the Heroku infrastructure. Follow our guide for creating a Heroku platform connection.

Heroku Platform Connection

Deploy to Heroku

The GRAX Platform walks you through deploying GRAX to Heroku. On the Deployments tab, click New Deployment and choose Heroku from the cloud providers.

The app can crash until the database is fully provisioned, which usually completes in less than 2 minutes. Refresh the app when provisioning is finished.

Deployment Configuration

Then you’re promoted to fill out information about your Heroku Deployment:

Heroku Deployment Details

Fill in the following details:

  • Region: Choose the Heroku region for your GRAX Deployment. You can use the region to colocate resources in an existing or future AWS cloud.
  • Dyno Size: We recommend a minimum of Performance-XL sized Heroku Dynos.
  • Postgres Addon Plan: Choose an add-on plan for Heroku Postgres. We recommend a minimum of Standard-0.
Advanced Settings
  • Administrator Account: This setting adds an ADMIN_PASSWORD environment variable to the Heroku app’s config. This variable allows anyone with that password to log into the GRAX app without SSO as a hard-coded local user. The password is randomly generated, and rotated anytime the variable is disabled and re-enabled in two separate deploys.
  • Custom Domain: Heroku allows you to choose your application’s domain. Enter it here.
  • Enterprise Team Name: This setting configures which Heroku Team GRAX uses for the Heroku Deployment.
  • Private Space Name: This setting configures which Heroku Private Space GRAX uses for the Heroku Deployment.

Click Deploy to deploy to Heroku.

Connect to Cloud Storage

GRAX stores backups in your cloud provider’s blob storage under your control. Follow our guide for configuring the storage backend in the GRAX deployment that the platform created.

Storage Configuration

Storage Add-ons

If you don’t already have a storage provider, you can use one from the Heroku Elements Marketplace.

For example, to use Bucketeer:

$ heroku addons:add bucketeer -a grax-deployment
Creating bucketeer on ⬢ grax-deployment... free

$ heroku config -a grax-deployment

You can then use BUCKETEER_BUCKET_NAME, BUCKETEER_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, and BUCKETEER_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY for the values in the form. We only recommend this installation for trial and sandbox deployments.

Turn-on Auto Backup

You can now turn on Auto Backup to back up your entire Salesforce org.

See our documentation for more info on GRAX features:

Removing the Add-on

You can still access your data on your storage bucket when you remove the add-on.

Remove GRAX via the CLI:

This action destroys all associated data and you can’t undo it.

$ heroku addons:destroy grax
-----> Removing grax from grax-license... done

Support

GRAX provides customer support for our software solution. Standard support is included in the software licensing fees associated. Read our support documentation.

Support requests that fall outside the standard implementation provided by GRAX incur fees based on the time and materials involved. These fees can also incur during troubleshooting in situations where the issue or problem and resolution aren’t within the scope of a solution or service provided by GRAX. Typically, these fees are hourly labor charges related to the time a technician or engineer spends working on the request.

Contact Us

Submit all GRAX support and runtime issues via one of the Heroku Support channels. If you experience any non-support-related issues, have product feedback, custom plans, or other questions, contact GRAX.

Feedback

Log in to submit feedback.