5 ms·

Introducing the Europe Region, Now Available in Public Beta

133 points by jbeynon 13y ago

michaelrkn 13y ago
woot! here's to hoping we get support for regional redundancy in the US soon.
- ironchief 13y ago
  Agreed, Heroku is fantastic but I'm paranoid about keeping all my servers in one region. #CTOproblems
  - gtaylor 13y ago
    if this is a big enough concern, it may be best to just drop down a level of abstraction and run directly on AWS.
hiddenfeatures 13y ago
From a legal standpoint: Does this now comply with the EU (German?) data privacy laws? I was told the other day, that using Heroku was a No-No, because you are storing your customer data with a non-EU-compliant company outside the EU. With this, the data resides in the EU. Does this (magically) make my troubles go away? Remarks: I am totally not a lawyer
- jbeynon 13y ago
  The press releases talk about them not being Safe Harbour yet but it is now much more in progress. Your data may pass through the US still at presently.
- friism 13y ago
  From the "Safe Harbor Compliance is Coming Soon" section: Heroku is not yet a registered participant in the Safe Harbor program. We’ve laid the groundwork for becoming Safe Harbor certified and expect to have it soon. The Europe region public beta is designed to let you build high-performance apps for European users. It does not currently address data residency or jurisdiction concerns. You should assume that some portions of your app and its data will be in, or pass through, datacenters located in the US.
  - hiddenfeatures 13y ago
    Oh sh*t. I didn't read the website (only the newsletter). Thanks for posting, though. Should be helpful for others as well!
- mikehale 13y ago
  Heroku is not (yet) safe harbor compliant, but we have plans to be so.
  - hiddenfeatures 13y ago
    How close are you to fulfilling those requirements? I am just asking, because there are quite a few German PaaS providers showing up now. So there seems to be a market. And it is a real problem when you try to do business with healthcare
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- neilmiddleton 13y ago
  (I work @heroku) Europe region beta is not yet Safe Harbor cert. Working on it. Sign up for updates to stay informed heroku.com/europe
- rmc 13y ago
  Well, IANAL, but they say they are based on Ireland (in Amazon's EC2 servers), so Irish law (which is a subset of EU law) applies to their servers there. I'm not sure what they keep meaning by "not safe harbour compliant", since the law applies all the time to all people in Ireland....
  - brazzy 13y ago
    > Irish law (which is a subset of EU law) Shouldn't that be "superset"?
    - rmc 13y ago
      ahem yes. :)
  - friism 13y ago
    IANAL either, but note that Heroku is an American company and that probably has implications due to the PATRIOT act. Check out what a Microsoft exec had to say about this: "Microsoft cannot provide those guarantees. Neither can any other company" - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-admits-patriot-act-can-access-eu-based-cloud-data/11225 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-admits-patri...
pinaceae 13y ago
Now, could SFDC please do the same - not having a datacenter in EU is so bad. Performance is measurably worse. And Safe Harbor is nice, but having a DC in EU would make the discussions around it even easier.
rdl 13y ago
Wow, this is awesome for both DR reasons and performance reasons. Congratulations Heroku! (Hopefully a second US Region and an Asia Region will follow...)
robotmay 13y ago
Hurrah! I'll be toying around with this first thing in the morning. Thanks for all the hard work, Heroku guys.
nthj 13y ago
I may be more excited about Heroku Fork than I am about the EU region. I've copied apps many many times, it's one of those tasks that I always meant to write up into a script and never got around to. Thanks Heroku!
- ryandaigle 13y ago
  Love to get your feedback on fork - ping me at: rd at heroku as you start using the tool.
- robotmay 13y ago
  Aye this sounds great for setting up staging environments, which until now we've had to do manually.
impostervt 13y ago
Would love the ability to have one instance in US, another in EU, and have heroku auto-route to the best one...
- ryandaigle 13y ago
  How would you handle db/data sync between the apps?
  - impostervt 13y ago
    ..I would let you (heroku) do that for me, magically? ;)
    - fdr 13y ago
      Wouldn't that be nice! I work on Heroku, on the databases, which are rather thorny in that department... ...it's going to take some evolution in how applications are written to make that work not uglifically (and it'll probably be ugly at first and for a while), but it's the dream, and I think it'll come to pass over time and with work from many people.
      - jaggederest 13y ago
        There are literally more Heroku folks in this thread than unaffiliated commenters :P well played. Personally I'd just be happy with a master-master postgres db or sharding, for $money, where money is some amount enough to make that happen without me worrying about it.
rmc 13y ago
Is this based in the EU? Or a non EU European country? EU =/= Europe. The blog post keeps mentioning Europe, but a lot of aliases are EU. This is important to figure out what law is applicable. (The graphic implies it's hosted in Ireland)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- neilmiddleton 13y ago
  This is based in the AWS EU datacenter in Ireland. However, as far as the law is concerned, we are not yet Safe Harbor compliant, but are actively working on it. Sign up for updates to stay informed heroku.com/europe
undoware 13y ago
Going to sacrifice the Karma to say: I didn't know Europe was out of alpha. They seem to be experiencing integration bugs. I knew we should have unit-tested Greece.
uggedal 13y ago
Just 4.5 years after EC2 was available in Ireland...: http://aws.amazon.com/releasenotes/DevPay/1924 http://aws.amazon.com/releasenotes/DevPay/1924
DoubleCluster 13y ago
Sorry, already running on EC2 by now...
evolve2k 13y ago
I'm hopeful that more regions are in the works. Might we see an Oceania region any time soon?

133 points by jbeynon 13y ago

michaelrkn 13y ago

woot! here's to hoping we get support for regional redundancy in the US soon.

ironchief 13y ago
Agreed, Heroku is fantastic but I'm paranoid about keeping all my servers in one region. #CTOproblems
- gtaylor 13y ago
  if this is a big enough concern, it may be best to just drop down a level of abstraction and run directly on AWS.

hiddenfeatures 13y ago

From a legal standpoint: Does this now comply with the EU (German?) data privacy laws? I was told the other day, that using Heroku was a No-No, because you are storing your customer data with a non-EU-compliant company outside the EU. With this, the data resides in the EU. Does this (magically) make my troubles go away? Remarks: I am totally not a lawyer

jbeynon 13y ago
The press releases talk about them not being Safe Harbour yet but it is now much more in progress. Your data may pass through the US still at presently.
friism 13y ago
From the "Safe Harbor Compliance is Coming Soon" section: Heroku is not yet a registered participant in the Safe Harbor program. We’ve laid the groundwork for becoming Safe Harbor certified and expect to have it soon. The Europe region public beta is designed to let you build high-performance apps for European users. It does not currently address data residency or jurisdiction concerns. You should assume that some portions of your app and its data will be in, or pass through, datacenters located in the US.
- hiddenfeatures 13y ago
  Oh sh*t. I didn't read the website (only the newsletter). Thanks for posting, though. Should be helpful for others as well!
mikehale 13y ago
Heroku is not (yet) safe harbor compliant, but we have plans to be so.
- hiddenfeatures 13y ago
  How close are you to fulfilling those requirements? I am just asking, because there are quite a few German PaaS providers showing up now. So there seems to be a market. And it is a real problem when you try to do business with healthcare
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
neilmiddleton 13y ago
(I work @heroku) Europe region beta is not yet Safe Harbor cert. Working on it. Sign up for updates to stay informed heroku.com/europe
rmc 13y ago
Well, IANAL, but they say they are based on Ireland (in Amazon's EC2 servers), so Irish law (which is a subset of EU law) applies to their servers there. I'm not sure what they keep meaning by "not safe harbour compliant", since the law applies all the time to all people in Ireland....
- brazzy 13y ago
  > Irish law (which is a subset of EU law) Shouldn't that be "superset"?
  - rmc 13y ago
    ahem yes. :)
- friism 13y ago
  IANAL either, but note that Heroku is an American company and that probably has implications due to the PATRIOT act. Check out what a Microsoft exec had to say about this: "Microsoft cannot provide those guarantees. Neither can any other company" - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-admits-patriot-act-can-access-eu-based-cloud-data/11225 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-admits-patri...

pinaceae 13y ago

Now, could SFDC please do the same - not having a datacenter in EU is so bad. Performance is measurably worse. And Safe Harbor is nice, but having a DC in EU would make the discussions around it even easier.

rdl 13y ago

Wow, this is awesome for both DR reasons and performance reasons. Congratulations Heroku! (Hopefully a second US Region and an Asia Region will follow...)

robotmay 13y ago

Hurrah! I'll be toying around with this first thing in the morning. Thanks for all the hard work, Heroku guys.

nthj 13y ago

I may be more excited about Heroku Fork than I am about the EU region. I've copied apps many many times, it's one of those tasks that I always meant to write up into a script and never got around to. Thanks Heroku!

ryandaigle 13y ago
Love to get your feedback on fork - ping me at: rd at heroku as you start using the tool.
robotmay 13y ago
Aye this sounds great for setting up staging environments, which until now we've had to do manually.

impostervt 13y ago

Would love the ability to have one instance in US, another in EU, and have heroku auto-route to the best one...

ryandaigle 13y ago
How would you handle db/data sync between the apps?
- impostervt 13y ago
  ..I would let you (heroku) do that for me, magically? ;)
  - fdr 13y ago
    Wouldn't that be nice! I work on Heroku, on the databases, which are rather thorny in that department... ...it's going to take some evolution in how applications are written to make that work not uglifically (and it'll probably be ugly at first and for a while), but it's the dream, and I think it'll come to pass over time and with work from many people.
    - jaggederest 13y ago
      There are literally more Heroku folks in this thread than unaffiliated commenters :P well played. Personally I'd just be happy with a master-master postgres db or sharding, for $money, where money is some amount enough to make that happen without me worrying about it.

rmc 13y ago

Is this based in the EU? Or a non EU European country? EU =/= Europe. The blog post keeps mentioning Europe, but a lot of aliases are EU. This is important to figure out what law is applicable. (The graphic implies it's hosted in Ireland)

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
neilmiddleton 13y ago
This is based in the AWS EU datacenter in Ireland. However, as far as the law is concerned, we are not yet Safe Harbor compliant, but are actively working on it. Sign up for updates to stay informed heroku.com/europe

undoware 13y ago

Going to sacrifice the Karma to say: I didn't know Europe was out of alpha. They seem to be experiencing integration bugs. I knew we should have unit-tested Greece.

uggedal 13y ago

Just 4.5 years after EC2 was available in Ireland...: http://aws.amazon.com/releasenotes/DevPay/1924 http://aws.amazon.com/releasenotes/DevPay/1924

DoubleCluster 13y ago

Sorry, already running on EC2 by now...

evolve2k 13y ago

I'm hopeful that more regions are in the works. Might we see an Oceania region any time soon?