---
title: "Up to 75% Faster Maintenances with Heroku Postgres and Redis Premium Plans"
description: "Heroku describes how it minimizes downtime during routine security and patching maintenances for high-availability Heroku Postgres and Heroku Redis plans. These plans run a writable primary alongside a hidden read-only standby, and maintenance requires moving application writes safely to the standby before promoting it. Previously, Heroku changed DATABASE_URL and restarted app dynos, then waited for the old primary to shut down and replicate remaining writes, which could extend downtime during long-running transactions. The new method redirects new connections to the new primary, kills existing connections to the old primary, and relies on reconnections plus a rolling restart to prevent further writes there. Heroku reports HA maintenances now complete in 15–40 seconds instead of 60 seconds or more, and says the behavior is default for Premium, Private, and Shield plans."
---

# Up to 75% Faster Maintenances with Heroku Postgres and Redis Premium Plans

[Heroku](https://yomu.fyi/company/heroku) · Corey Purcell · Aug 28, 2019

**Type:** Explainer

## Summary

Heroku describes how it minimizes downtime during routine security and patching maintenances for high-availability Heroku Postgres and Heroku Redis plans. These plans run a writable primary alongside a hidden read-only standby, and maintenance requires moving application writes safely to the standby before promoting it. Previously, Heroku changed DATABASE\_URL and restarted app dynos, then waited for the old primary to shut down and replicate remaining writes, which could extend downtime during long-running transactions. The new method redirects new connections to the new primary, kills existing connections to the old primary, and relies on reconnections plus a rolling restart to prevent further writes there. Heroku reports HA maintenances now complete in 15–40 seconds instead of 60 seconds or more, and says the behavior is default for Premium, Private, and Shield plans.

## Context

Heroku Postgres and Redis high-availability plans require maintenance to move application writes from a writable primary to a hidden read-only standby without losing writes. The previous process could extend downtime while waiting for long-running transactions and replicated writes to finish.

## Approach / What changed

The new process immediately redirects new connections to the new primary, kills existing connections to the old primary, and uses reconnections and a rolling app restart to ensure dynos connect to the correct database before the old standby is promoted.

## Takeaways

- High-availability plans use a writable primary and a hidden read-only standby; maintenance promotes the standby and builds a replacement standby afterward.
- The new process prevents further writes to the old primary by redirecting new connections and terminating existing ones, accepting possible connection errors that reconnections can resolve.
- Heroku reports maintenance times of 15–40 seconds, compared with 60 seconds or more previously; the behavior is now default for Premium, Private, and Shield plans.

**Tags:** [Heroku](https://yomu.fyi/topic/heroku), [Postgres](https://yomu.fyi/topic/postgres), [Redis](https://yomu.fyi/topic/redis)

- Source: [Heroku](https://www.heroku.com/blog/faster-maintenances-with-heroku-postgres-and-redis-premium-plans)
- Source URL: https://www.heroku.com/blog/faster-maintenances-with-heroku-postgres-and-redis-premium-plans
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-09-09T16:01:44.588Z

[Read original post](https://www.heroku.com/blog/faster-maintenances-with-heroku-postgres-and-redis-premium-plans)