Production Checklist

We have found that a short checklist is valuable when setting up a new production environment or preparing for a launch:

• Are we on the latest Heroku stack (opens new window)?
• Are we using a concurrent web server? See how to deploy with Puma (opens new window).
• Are long-running processes such as email delivery being run in background jobs? See how to set up Delayed Job (opens new window).
• Are there redundant (at least two) web and background processes running?
• Are we using SSL? See "SSL Certificates" section below.
• Are API requests being made via a separate subdomain (api.example.com)? Even if the same app, this gives us architectural flexibility in the future.
• Is the latest Ruby (opens new window) defined in the Gemfile? See how to set it up (opens new window).
• Is config stored in environment variables (opens new window)?
• Are deploys done manually at a scheduled time when teammates are fresh and available if something goes wrong?
• Do deploys follow a well-documented script (opens new window)?
• Are we sending logs to a remote logging service? See "Log Collection" section below.
• Are we using a Heroku "Standard" database or higher? See Heroku production databases (opens new window).
• Are we backing up our production database? See Heroku PGBackups (opens new window).
• Are we monitoring performance and uptime? See "Performance Monitoring" section below.
• Are we tracking errors? See "Error Tracking" section below.