According to Heroku, “An app starts impacting the world when customers start interacting with it. Getting apps out in the wild, out onto the Internet quickly, and iterating, fast, is what can make or break companies.” Managing infrastructure can overwhelm a development team and hinder the agility company’s need to remain competitive. Instead of focusing on innovation and bringing ideas to life, developers instead must wrestle with infrastructure items. Heroku is a platform that removes this friction to free them up to focus on the company’s core goals. Here we’ll discuss what is Heroku, how it's used, and the benefits it brings.

Table of Contents

What Is Heroku?

The tool is a Platform-as-a-Service (Paas) offering that provides tools for developing software in the cloud. It is a tool that allows businesses to build, deploy, manage and scale applications without the infrastructure headaches normally required with in-house development. 

Hosted by AWS

The tool is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Load balancing, servers, networks, storage, logging and monitoring are all handled by AWS. This approach means AWS manages all computing resources. The benefit is that it significantly reduces setup time for new development projects.

Plug-Ins

The platform features a rich ecosystem of plug-and-play add-ons. That way, developers don't need to develop everything from scratch. They can choose from tools and services for extending applications.

Integrate.io provides integrations that allow you to connect your applications to the tool’s feature-rich ecosystem.

What Is Heroku’s Architecture?

Applications in this platform are deployed in lightweight Linux containers called Dynos. The containers share the same host (Linux), but they are isolated and cannot see anything in another container. The containers can hold anything from simple applications to complex enterprise applications. These containers are scalable both vertically and horizontally. There are three types of Dynos:

Web Dynos

Web Dynos are web processes. They receive HTTP requests. This Dyno is the default deployment for the platform. The app runs in a single Dyno instance that serves the application to web users.

Worker Dynos

The key to building a scalable and responsive app is background jobs. These jobs take requests from the web app and process the time-intensive tasks in the background. This reduces performance issues that sometimes occur when requests become backlogged. Transferring these requests to worker Dynos allows the web Dynos to handle more web requests.

One-Off Dynos

One-off tasks such as maintenance are handled via one-off Dynos. Database migrations, background jobs, console sessions are just two examples of such administrative tasks. These types of tasks can be scheduled using the tool’s scheduler.

The Integrate.io platform’s Heroku integration allows you to use Dynos to perform tasks such as running ETL processes. 

What Is Heroku?: PaaS With Multiple Convenient Deployment Options

The tool has several convenient deployment options. The platform has an option for a git-based deployment. Companies can link their app directly from GitHub. This enables the option for default deployment each time code is pushed to the master branch. There is also a repository option called Heroku git. Projects can also be deployed using Docker Container Registry in the tool.

What Is Heroku?: Versatility in Databases Supported

The platform offers several databases from which to choose. It offers PostgreSQL as a service. There are also several add-ons to work with other storage options such as MySQL, MongoDB, and Redis. 

What Is Heroku?: A Language Agnostic Platform

The Tool is language agnostic. It supports most open-source languages. You may choose to use different languages for each application. Or, you can stick with a language that is already heavily utilized in your company.

As a low-code/no-code tool, Integrate.io removes the barrier of learning code to perform integrations. Users with little to no technical knowledge can build integrations easily.

What Is Heroku’s Scalability? 

Scalability is key to achieving system agility when traffic spikes. You can use the tool’s command line or admin portal to scale the application quickly.

Horizontal Scaling

The platform achieves horizontal scaling by allowing you to add more Dyno instances. Adding more Dynos allows your app to handle more concurrent requests which speeds the application’s response time. If you see a spike in application traffic, you can quickly add more instances. The platform also allows you to configure automatic scaling when traffic spikes. 

Vertical Scaling

Adding larger Dynos improves the application response time by adding more RAM for the application. 

No matter the size of your systems, Integrate.io provides hundreds of integrations to help you connect to the platform and scale your data ecosystem in a way that meets your company’s needs.

What Is Heroku?: Feature-Rich Platform With Significant Benefits 

The platform has many advantages over traditional data warehouses. From scaling to productivity, company’s will see gains from this versatile tool.

Improved Productivity - The platform allows developers to focus on innovation and creating solutions rather than worrying about infrastructure.

Rich Monitoring Capabilities - The tool features robust monitoring capabilities that provide insight into the application’s performance. It also allows you to create a unified dashboard that can be shared between developers, testers, and stakeholders.

Setup and Scaling - You can create a new server quickly using the command line. The platform also provides simple and fast horizontal and vertical scaling.

How Integrate.io Can Help Integrate With Heroku

Integrate.io streamlines the entire integration process. Even if a team lacks technical experience, they can build an integration by piecing together pre-built components. Integrate.io takes the stress out of integrations by empowering everyone in the organization to build simple pipelines from a variety of data sources.

Integrate.io is your all-in-one solution to integrate your systems. Now is the perfect time to begin your data integrations using the no-code/low-code tool. Sign up for a personalized demo to see how easy it is to learn the tool to build your pipelines.