Migrating PostgreSQL from Heroku to Render

3

Hi Lucas,

Thank you for the kind words about Render.

I’ve outlined the steps to migrate your postgres (12.5) db from heroku to Render’s (11.7) below:

Download database backup from Heroku

# (Optional) Turn maintenence mode on to prevent new things from being written to the database during migration
heroku maintenance:on --app APP 

# To download a backup from heroku. Will be saved as latest.dump
heroku pg:backups:capture --app APP
heroku pg:backups:download --app APP

Restore on Render

Pre-requisite Create a database on Render

# Restore if you have the same version (PG 12) locally
# substitute USER and DATABASE_NAME with values from the Render dashboard
pg_restore --verbose --clean --no-acl --no-owner -h postgres.render.com -U USER -d DATABASE_NAME latest.dump

###### OR if you don't have Postgres 12 locally ######

# This step uses a Docker image if you don't have Postgres 12 installed locally
# You will likely need to replace (pwd) with $(pwd) if you're using bash
# instead of fish
docker run -v `pwd`:/root -it postgres:12 bash

# Now go to the right directory and run the upload command

cd /root && pg_restore --verbose --clean --no-acl --no-owner -h postgres.render.com -U USER -d DATABASE_NAME latest.dump

I was able to use the above procedure to migrate a test database running on heroku (postgres 12.5) to Render ( postgres 11.7). However, migrating across major versions can have some unique corner cases so I’d recommend doing a test walkthrough of the process before you turn maintenance mode on ( and incur downtime).

Support for postgres 12 is in the works. If you’d like to be notified about our progress on that feature you can upvote it here

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