Heroku Postgres Maintenance Windows

Last updated 13 July 2016

From time to time, Heroku must take your database offline to perform maintenance tasks. Typical tasks include upgrading the underlying infrastructure of the database (for example, patching the operating system or required libraries) or upgrading Postgres itself. This maintenance is handled automatically by Heroku.

Checking if maintenance is required for your database

You can check if maintenance is required on a database by using pg:info.

$ heroku pg:info
Plan:           Standard 4
Status:         Available
Data Size:      26.1 MB
...
Maintenance:    required by 2014-02-01 00:00:00 +0000

Setting a maintenance window

Some database plans support maintenance windows that can be set. Users can specify the day-of-week and time (UTC) at which the maintenance will occur:

$ heroku pg:maintenance window="Sunday 14:30" DATABASE

Setting a maintenance window allows you to minimize the impact on your application and users. We recommend selecting a time during which maintenance would have the least impact on your business. Maintenance windows are 4 hours long starting at the time you specify. The actual time required for maintenance depends on exactly what’s taking place, but it will usually require your database to be offline for only a few minutes.

Limitations

Maintenance windows that can be set and manual maintenance runs are only available on standard, premium and enterprise plans.

Heroku will make the best effort to honor your maintenance window request but it is not guaranteed. If there is an emergency where the security or integrity of your data is threatened, we may perform the maintenance outside of your regular window at our discretion.