Knowing which instance your Salesforce organization(s) is “on” can prove tremendously useful when monitoring issues that affect multiple customers. It’s especially important when you have to find out where data centers that store your data and metadata are located – perhaps even more importantly, when looking forward to properly managing the Salesforce release schedule three times a year.
This article will explore all of the details you should know about Salesforce instances, and why you, as the administrator of a Salesforce org, need to be aware of this information.
What Is a Salesforce Instance?
Simply put, an instance is the specific server cluster that your version of Salesforce is hosted on.
As data centers are located all around the world, it’s worth noting that multiple customers are served from the same data center or server and, most commonly, they are on the same Salesforce instance. Even so, each customer’s information is completely secure and segregated by their individual Org Id, and multiple geographically different data centers are used to avoid any potential single points of failure.
You can find out more about Salesforce’s multi-tenant architecture here.
Keep in mind that Salesforce org instances will primarily be on one of the types listed below:
- First-Party Infrastructure (owned and operated by Salesforce).
- Public Cloud Infrastructure (hosted on Salesforce-managed AWS).
- Hyperforce Infrastructure (hosted on Salesforce-managed AWS).
If you’re curious, you can find out more about these by checking out this knowledge article, which also includes a list of locations and available instances.
What Is My Salesforce Instance?
Since we have covered what an instance is, the different types of instances, and of course, what they are used for, you may now be curious about which instance your Salesforce org is on. Check out the video below!
As you will have noticed in the video, once you find the instance a certain org is on, you can also find more details about that particular instance on Trust Status – we will get into this in the next section.
All in all, there are three main ways for you to find out the instance of your Salesforce org:
- By navigating to Company Information in Setup, as shown in the video.
- From the URL (if you do not have MyDomain enabled).
- By searching for your domain directly on Trust Status (salesforce.com).
This knowledge article highlights key details about all the various methods you can leverage to find out what instance you’re on.
Does the Salesforce Instance Matter?
The short answer? Yes. The first reason – and in my opinion the most important – is that this is how you will know when the next Salesforce release is coming your way.
Since it’s already that time, we can look at the Winter ’23 release as an example. The release was first rolled out during the weekend of September 9, 2022 and will be rolled out to all remaining instances during the weekend of October 14.
Let’s say you have been waiting for a functionality to become available during this release to help resolve a business challenge. A month more or less makes a difference, doesn’t it?
If you know your Salesforce instance, you will be able to tell exactly when the release will become available for your Salesforce org to make use of the new functionality. The information below is available on Salesforce Trust, under the Trust > Status page.
Once you click on your instance, the Maintenance tab will display exactly when the release will be deployed to your instance. As you can see below, right now for this instance, the dates are in for both the Winter ’23 and the Spring ’23 releases.
Trust, as the name also suggests, is one of the core Salesforce values and this is where various instance-related issues affecting multiple tenants will be posted – almost in real-time. By knowing your instance, you will be able to quickly observe any service disruption, performance degradation issue, or simple maintenance happening in relation to your instance.
Summary
I hope that the concept of Salesforce instances is more familiar to you now, along with the different types and the reasons for using them – this simple context will help you to succeed in your day-to-day life as a Salesforce professional.