Regions
Last updated 12 September 2017
Table of Contents
Heroku applications can be deployed in several different geographic locations. The available locations for an application depend on whether the application is deployed to a Common Runtime or to a Private Space.
For apps in the Common Runtime, you specify a region when you create the app. For apps in Private Spaces, the region is set when you create the Private Space. Each Private Space exists in a single geographic location and all applications in the Private Space run in that location. The Common Runtime in the U.S. is located in Virginia, while the Common Runtime in the EU is located in Dublin, Ireland. While Private Spaces are located in six different regions geographically.
View the list of available regions
To view the list of available regions, use this CLI command:
$ heroku regions
ID Location Runtime
───────── ─────────────────────── ──────────────
eu Europe Common Runtime
us United States Common Runtime
dublin Dublin, Ireland Private Spaces
frankfurt Frankfurt, Germany Private Spaces
oregon Oregon, United States Private Spaces
sydney Sydney, Australia Private Spaces
tokyo Tokyo, Japan Private Spaces
virginia Virginia, United States Private Spaces
To filter the list of available regions by the Common Runtime, use:
$ heroku regions --common
ID Location Runtime
── ───────────── ──────────────
eu Europe Common Runtime
us United States Common Runtime
To filter the list of available regions by Private Spaces, use:
$ heroku regions --private
ID Location Runtime
───────── ─────────────────────── ──────────────
dublin Dublin, Ireland Private Spaces
frankfurt Frankfurt, Germany Private Spaces
oregon Oregon, United States Private Spaces
sydney Sydney, Australia Private Spaces
tokyo Tokyo, Japan Private Spaces
virginia Virginia, United States Private Spaces
Heroku exposes more detailed information about each of these regions in the Platform API. For example, if you need to know which infrastructure provider is used for the Frankfurt region, you can make a direct API query:
$ curl -n -X GET https://api.heroku.com/regions/frankfurt -H "Accept: application/vnd.heroku+json; version=3"
{
"country":"Germany",
"created_at":"2015-08-20T01:37:59Z",
"description":"Frankfurt, Germany",
"id":"37095377-0fed-41e5-b2db-778818d362aa",
"locale":"Frankfurt",
"name":"frankfurt",
"private_capable":true,
"provider":{
"name":"amazon-web-services",
"region":"eu-central-1"
},
"updated_at":"2015-08-20T01:37:59Z"
}
The result indicates that the Frankfurt region maps to Amazon Web Services eu-central-1 region.
Default regions
Unless a different region is specified, apps in the Common Runtime will be created in the us region. See the Common Runtime documentation to see the list of supported regions.
If you create a Private Space without specifying a region it will be created in the virginia region. See the Private Spaces documentation to see the list of supported regions.
Specify a region
When creating the app in the Common Runtime, to specify a particular region, use the --region flag :
$ heroku create --region eu
Creating calm-ocean-1234... done, region is eu
http://calm-ocean-1234.herokuapp.com/ | git@heroku.com:calm-ocean-1234.git
Git remote heroku added
If you are using Private Spaces, the region is set when the Private Space is created. All apps created in a Private Space will run in the region where the space was created. For more information, see the Private Spaces article.
Verify an app’s region
To verify an app’s region, check the Region attribute of the heroku info command:
$ heroku info
=== calm-ocean-1234
Git URL: git@heroku.com:calm-ocean-1234.git
Owner Email: user@test.com
Region: eu
Repo Size: 164M
...
Migrating existing apps
Existing applications can be migrated to a different region.
If you are using Private Spaces, see the Migrate Apps section of the Private Spaces article.
Add-ons and region support
Add-ons with region support will be provisioned in the same region as the app. Provision them as you normally would:
$ heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql
Add-ons that don’t require a low-latency connection to your app will be provisioned in the default region if unavailable in your app’s region. If an add-on is latency sensitive and is not available in the same region as your app, provisioning will fail:
$ heroku addons:create cloudcounter
Adding cloudcounter on calm-ocean-1234... failed
! This app is in region eu, cloudcounter:basic is only available in region us.
You can find add-ons supporting your app’s region in the Add-on Runtime Availability reference.
Deployment
Deployment does not have any impact on region. The region was determined when you created the app (or, if you are using Private Spaces, when you created the Private Space containing the app). All subsequent deploys to the app will happen in the specified region.
One-off dynos
One-off dynos are run in the region of the app. This is also true of secondary services such as Heroku Scheduler that provision one-off dynos to execute jobs.
Custom domains
Custom domain configuration is agnostic to region. Use the heroku domains commands to manage custom domains.
SSL
SSL works slightly differently depending on where apps are deployed. Consult the SSL Endpoint documentation for more details.
Data residency
Dynos and databases reside physically in the region where you create them. However, Heroku consists of a number of additional services that are not always located in the same region.
Consider the following aspects of Heroku’s architecture to understand how data may be transmitted and stored geographically:
- No guarantees are made about the physical location of Heroku’s control surface APIs through which all CLI commands and the management of your applications occur.
- Heroku does not control where Add-on Providers store data. Contact the add-on provider directly for more information.
- For more details on data residency in Heroku Postgres, please the Data Residency section within the Heroku Postgres documentation.