Salesforce Instances Documentation

Understanding Salesforce infrastructure and instance data

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What are Salesforce Instances?
Understanding the foundation of Salesforce's infrastructure

Salesforce instances (also known as "pods") are the fundamental units of Salesforce's infrastructure. Each instance is a separate and independent deployment of the Salesforce platform that hosts customer organizations (orgs).

Instance Architecture

Each Salesforce instance consists of application servers, database servers, search indexes, and other components that work together to provide the Salesforce service. Instances are isolated from each other, which helps with performance, security, and maintenance.

Instance Types

Salesforce operates different types of instances:

  • Production: Hosts customer production orgs
  • Sandbox: Hosts customer testing environments
  • Patch: Used for deploying updates
  • Preview: For previewing upcoming releases

Instance Naming Convention

Salesforce instances follow a specific naming convention that provides information about their location and purpose:

  • NA139: North America instance #139
  • EU87: Europe instance #87
  • AP0: Asia Pacific instance #0
  • CS40: Canada South instance #40

High Availability and Disaster Recovery

Salesforce maintains high availability through a primary and disaster recovery (DR) architecture:

  • Primary Location: Where the instance normally operates
  • DR Location: A geographically separate location that can take over if the primary location experiences an outage
  • Data Replication: Data is continuously replicated between primary and DR locations