Introducing pgvector for Heroku Postgres

Over the past few weeks, we worked on adding pgvector as an extension on Heroku Postgres. We're excited to release this feature, and based on the feedback on our public roadmap, many of you are too. We want to share a bit more about how you can use it and how it may be helpful to you.

All Standard-tier or higher databases running Postgres 15 now support the pgvector extension. You can get started by running CREATE EXTENSION vector; in a client session. Postgres 15 has been the default version on Heroku Postgres since March 2023. If you're on an older version and want to use pgvector, upgrade to Postgres 15.

The extension adds the vector...

Last month, Heroku announced the beta release of Router 2.0, the new Common Runtime router!

As part of our commitment to infrastructure modernization, Heroku is making upgrades to the Common Runtime routing layer. The beta release of Router 2.0 is an important step along this journey. We’re excited to give you an inside look at all we’ve been doing to get here.

In both the Common Runtime and Private Spaces, the Heroku router is responsible for serving requests to customers’ web dynos. In 2024, Router 2.0 will replace the existing Common Runtime router. We’re being transparent about this project so that you, our customers, are motivated to try out Router 2.0 now, while it’s in beta. As...

In this post, we’d like to share an example of the kind of behind-the-scenes work that the Heroku team does to continuously improve the platform based on customer feedback.

The Heroku Common Runtime is one of the best parts of Heroku. It’s the modern embodiment of the principle of computing resource time-sharing pioneered by John McCarthy and later by UNIX, which evolved into the underpinnings of much of modern-day cloud computing. Because Common Runtime resources are safely shared between customers, we can offer dynos very efficiently, participate in the GitHub Student Program, and run the Heroku Open Source Credit Program.

We previously allowed individual dynos to burst their CPU use...

This article was originally authored by Srinath Ananthakrishnan, an engineer on the Heroku Runtime Networking Team

Summary

This following story outlines a recent issue we saw with migrating one of our internal systems over to a new EC2 substrate and in the process breaking one of our customer’s use cases. We also outline how we went about discovering the root of the issue, how we fixed it, and how we enjoyed solving a complex problem that helped keep the Heroku customer experience as simple and straightforward as possible!

History

Heroku has been leveraging AWS and EC2 since the very early days. All these years, the Common Runtime has been running on EC2 Classic and while there have...

In true JavaScript fashion, there was no shortage of releases in the JavaScript ecosystem this year. This includes the Yarn project’s release of Yarn 2 with a compressed cache of JavaScript dependencies, including a Yarn binary to reference, that can be used for a zero-install deployment.

Yarn is a package manager that also provides developers a project management toolset. Now, Yarn 2 is now officially supported by Heroku, and Heroku developers are able to take advantage of leveraging zero-installs during their Node.js builds. We’ll go over a popular use case for Yarn that is enhanced by Yarn 2: using workspaces to manage dependencies for your monorepo.

We will cover taking advantage of...