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Lightweight containers for running apps

Dynos: the heart of the Heroku platform

*Heroku is a container-based cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS). Developers use Heroku to deploy, manage, and scale modern apps. The platform is elegant, flexible, and easy to use, offering the simplest path to getting apps to market quickly. Heroku is fully managed, giving developers the freedom to focus on core product without the burden of maintaining app infrastructure. Integrated tools, services, and workflows are all meticulously designed to help maximize individual and team productivity.

App developers rely on software abstractions to simplify development and enhance productivity When it comes to running apps, containerization abstracts away the burden of managing hardware or virtual machines Instead of hardware management, you deploy an app to Heroku, which packages the app’s code and dependencies into containers — lightweight, isolated environments that provide compute, memory, an OS, and an ephemeral filesystem Containers are typically run on a shared host, yet are completely isolated from each other

The Heroku Platform uses the container model to run and scale all Heroku apps The containers used at Heroku are called “dynos ” Dynos are isolated, virtualized Linux containers that are designed to execute code based on a user-specified command Your app can scale to any specified number of dynos based on its resource demands Heroku’s container management capabilities provide you with an easy way to scale and manage the number, size, and type of dynos your app may need at any given time

Dynos are the building blocks that power any Heroku app, from simple to sophisticated Deploying to dynos, and relying on Heroku's dyno management, makes it easy for you to build and run flexible, scalable apps - freeing you from managing infrastructure, so you can focus on building and running great apps

$5 for 1000 dyno hours/month

Learn more about how dynos work on Heroku

Buildtime: preparing code to run in a dyno

Heroku automates the build process, from the initial deploy to producing a “slug” - ready to be pushed to a dyno More on the Heroku build process →

Runtime: configuring process and dyno types

Developers can optimize their app at runtime by breaking it down into different “process types” that determine what code runs in different dynos More on dyno configuration → Heroku manages the dynos, and cycles dynos to maintain the health of all apps and the overall system More on the dyno lifecycle →

Scaling apps with dynos

When an app needs to scale, Heroku makes it easy to change a dyno formation instantly More on dyno scaling →

Dynos in Heroku Private Spaces

High performance dynos in Private Spaces communicate directly with each other over a private network More on dynos in Private Spaces → “Heroku makes managing scale incredibly easy When we're getting a spike in traffic, we don’t have to spin up a bunch of new servers, we simply add more dynos ”