Heroku Postegrs - Seamless Scaling

Question

I am using the Heroku Postgres Add-On for the data layer of my web app. There are several plans available, from 9$/m to 6400$/m.

How fast and seamless can I scale between them if the database turns out to be a bottleneck for my application? Is there some kind of API for this or do I have to upgrade plans manually?

Answer 1

If you are using a production tier database, the recommendation is to create a new follower database with a plan level you want. Once the follower is caught up to the master you can briefly place your app in maintenance mode and promote the follower database to master database. I've been using this method to upgrade to a new database tier with very little downtime (minutes).

Heroku's documentation details the process: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-postgres-follower-databases#database-upgrades-and-migrations-with-changeovers