A Complete Guide to Salesforce Hyperforce Migration

Security. Compliance. Multi-cloud. These terms are getting maximum attention these days (and for good reason). Being a Salesforce user, you understand the drill of keeping your data secure and wisely accessible across the company. What if we tell you could unlock even greater security, flexibility, and control over your Salesforce org, with its new offering, Hyperforce?

For starters, here is the mind-bender: IDC predicts that by 2023, over 80% of enterprises will be using a multi-cloud strategy for their critical applications. Hyperforce steps right in to address this need. It’s a secure, unified cloud infrastructure that breaks Salesforce free from its data centres and take it into the world of multi-cloud.

This blog dives into the depths of Hyperforce, inclusive of its key features and how it can uplift your Salesforce Org. You’ll also explore Salesforce’s best practices to ensure a smooth and stress-free migration.

Stay put to take your Salesforce experience to the next level!

What is Hyperforce Migration?

Hyperforce is the reinvention in Salesforce’s architecture, built for the public cloud, and designed to reliably and securely deliver the most relevant solution with flexibility and fast time-to-value.

Hyperforce’s infrastructure is developed through code, unlike hardware, allowing Salesforce users to have more choice and control over their data residency across the Salesforce platform and applications. By extending its product portfolio to new global geographies via public cloud infrastructure, Salesforce supports the evolving needs of its diverse customer base.

Through Hyperforce migration, organizations gain the freedom to run their Salesforce instances on a public cloud, as Salesforce’s team prefers, enhancing control over data storage and processing locations.

Hyperforce delivers:

• Data Residency: Global service with customizable residency and compliance controls.
• Scalability: Flexible, sustainable business growth.
• Security: Default security measures, including least-privileged control and data encryption.
• Privacy: Enhanced privacy standards for customer data transparency and control.
• Agility: Minimal downtime, faster development, and interoperability with cloud providers.

Salesforce Customer 360 now operates on a revamped, more adaptable, and efficient architecture, enabling access to Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Industries, and other solutions through leading public clouds worldwide.

Why Salesforce develop Hyperforce?

Salesforce’s shared infrastructure had its limitations, particularly in handling vast data volumes and intensive computations. With Hyperforce, Salesforce aims to compete more effectively with CRM giants like Oracle and Microsoft by allowing customers to leverage public cloud infrastructure for storing their Salesforce instances.

Previously, each Salesforce instance was confined to Salesforce data centres. However, Hyperforce introduces flexibility, enabling both existing and prospective customers to choose the location of their Salesforce instance. This resolves scalability and geographic constraints, enhancing accessibility and performance.

Before Hyperforce, many potential customers struggled to find compliant solutions that met diverse geographic regulations. Existing customers faced challenges in complying with varying regulations, hindering data merging and business acquisitions.

Moreover, asynchronous queues such as future, scheduled, and batch jobs faced limitations due to multiple customers sharing the same “pod” or server. By utilizing public cloud infrastructure, Salesforce customers can now operate without the constraints of shared resources, optimizing planning and execution.

Hyperforce Migration Architecture

Salesforce started as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to connect well with customers and stakeholders, transitioning to cloud infrastructure in the last two decades. Recently, many big giants like Microsoft, Amazon and Google Cloud have started offering their infrastructure as a service, compiled with the components (storage, servers, networking, etc) in a self-service way. Anyways, every business running over the cloud or any other software demands IaaS in one or the other way.

To enhance scalability and security, Salesforce developed Hyperforce, a next-generation infrastructure platform. Built on cloud-native tools and processes, Hyperforce embodies five key architectural principles: Immutable Infrastructure, Multi-availability-zone design, a zero-trust security approach, infrastructure-as-code, and a clean slate.

Take a close look at all these five principles to understand the roots of Hyperforce:

Immutable Infrastructure

In Hyperforce, when you establish infrastructure, all the resources, like containers, services and networks, stay immutable. Unlike traditional methods where patches or direct alterations are made in the production environment, most users opt for wholesale replacement with updated versions. This ensures a consistent state, eliminating configuration drift.

While the term “immutable doesn’t pertain to the dynamic nature of Salesforce services like Customer 360 data, it mostly underlies the structure of the software responsible for storing and processing that data. This approach enables us to manage changes to our software systems predictably and stably effectively.

Multi-Availability-Zone Design

Salesforce leverages the power of multi-availability zones (Azs) to ensure high availability within the public cloud. Consider these zones as geographically distinct data centres in the same region, close enough to function as a single unit but far enough to avoid common failure points like network issues and power outages.

By distributing data and applications across three of these availability zones at max, Hyperforce ensures redundancy. If a hardware failure or power issue disrupts one zone, your systems can continue operating seamlessly in the others. This cuts down the downtimes and ensures your business functions remain accessible. Hyperforce constantly keep tabs on all services to find out and address any potential issues before they impact your fluency. This proactive approach keeps your data and applications safe and easy to access as and when you need them.

Zero Trust

It means there is no scope for implicit access. With Hyperforce, every request for access to resources goes through a rigorous authentication as well as authorization process, irrespective of its origin within the system, removing the possibility of any vulnerabilities.

Hyperforce encrypts all data at rest and in transit by adding an extra layer of protection against unauthorized access. The principle of least privilege ensures that users are only given the access they need to perform their tasks, thus minimizing the risk of damage in the event of a possible security breach. In addition, access is granted according to the just-in-time (JIT) principle, i.e. it’s automatically removed after a certain period of time, which further increases security.

Infrastructure as Code

Managing traditional infrastructure can sometimes get risky. Manual edits and configurations make the system prone to human error, leading to bugs or vulnerabilities. Hyperforce offers a safer approach by utilizing well-defined configuration details (metadata artifacts) stored under source control instead of directly editing them through operators. It ensures entire infrastructure changes are put under the same stringent review process as you update any software.

By relying on metadata artifacts, you can reduce the risk of errors caused by human intervention. Further, source control allows to track changes, making it easier to identify and revert to previous versions if necessary.

Just like any other software component, infrastructure changes in Hyperforce follow a defined lifecycle. This includes validation, peer review, automated testing, staging, and gradual rollout.

Clean Slate

Ever since, companies have been practising a “lift and shift” approach to operating on the public cloud, making minimal changes in their software to adapt to the cloud environment, essentially mirroring their on-premises setup. Salesforce went on a different path from Hyperforce.

They reimagined how a user will interact with the cloud. This new infrastructure prioritizes cloud-native practices with unwavering security and availability of every decision at the core. This approach allowed us to truly leverage the benefits of the cloud, leaving behind outdated practices for a more robust and secure future.

Benefits of Hyperforce Migration

Hyperforce has many benefits that enable Salesforce users to work with high security, better efficiency, and flexibility:

1. Data Residency: Control Where Your Data Lives

Hyperforce empowers you to be the decision-maker on where your data is going to live, parallely offering services across multiple regions. This flexibility simplifies compliance with regional regulations and data privacy laws, a crucial factor for businesses operating globally. However, it’s important to note that not all applications are accessible from every region, so planning your migration strategy is key.

2. Sustainable Scalability for Growth:

Public cloud providers ensure Hyperforce has the resources to scale seamlessly as your business grows. Additionally, Salesforce is committed to offering a sustainable solution with infrastructure powered by 100% renewable energy and cloud providers with net-zero carbon emission goals.

3. Unmatched Security: Protecting Your Data with Confidence

Hyperforce leverages industry-leading security practices, including:

• Least Privilege: You can grant minimum and relevant data & functionalities access to the users they need to perform their jobs.
• Zero Trust: This principle entails strategies and ways to mitigate constant threats (internal and external).
• Data Encryption: This adds an additional layer to data both at rest and in transit (across networks).

4. Transparency and Control Over Privacy:

Hyperforce ensures compliance with all relevant privacy regulations. Cloud service providers have strict procedures for securing your data and that of your customers. Another good thing that you get is complete transparency on how your data is being collected and used.

5. Agile Development: Faster Innovation

Traditional Salesforce data centre architecture relies on instances with shared resources. When an organization needs more resources, migration to another instance can lead to temporary downtime. Hyperforce eliminates this issue. Public cloud providers ensure adequate resources for all environments, including testing, development, and production. This translates to faster development cycles and smoother rollouts. Additionally, native integration with public clouds like AWS opens doors for further optimization.

By migrating to Hyperforce, you gain control over data residency, achieve sustainable scalability, benefit from robust security, experience enhanced privacy compliance, and unlock faster development cycles.

Top Considerations To Keep In Mind Prior Hyperforce Migration

Thinking about migrating to Hyperforce? Good choice! Hyperforce is a robust new cloud infrastructure from Salesforce. It is designed to work seamlessly with your existing Salesforce integrations (third-party systems & applications). It leverages modern technology while staying compatible with many older versions of Salesforce.

Before you leap, a few key things must be considered to ensure a smooth transition. These steps will prepare your current setup to utilize everything Hyperforce offers fully.

1. Avoiding Interruptions During Maintenance: Don’t Use Hard-Coded URLs

Salesforce conducts routine maintenance checks to keep your platform running smoothly and data secure across the system. However, if your custom code is built from hard-coded URLs with specific instance names, these updates can cause disruptions. Avoiding these hard-coded references for a seamless experience during maintenance is best recommended. Here’s what you can do

Use Generic URLs: Opt for more generic versions like login.salesforce.com instead of URLs with your instance name. You can also leverage “My Domain” by using “.my.salesforce.com”, ensuring your codes connect to the proper environment regardless of maintenance activities.

These practices help you minimize interruptions and keep your Salesforce org running seamlessly during maintenance duration.

2. Securing Your Connections: Beyond IP Allowlists

Traditionally, organizations used to rely on IP allowlists, which specified authorized IP addresses that could access their network. However, this approach had some limitations. Here’s why you must be shifting your attention to more secure and modern alternatives: 

• Move past the IP Allowlist: Instead of whitelisting specific IP addresses, you can use Allowlist Domains. This approach allows access from Salesforce domains, like *.force.com, offering more flexibility.

• Modernize Authentication: Implement robust authentication and authorization (AuthN/AuthZ) for your web services and APIs. This ensures only your organization can access your network, even if an unauthorized user acquires an IP address on the allowlist.

• Mutual Trust with mTLS: Take security further with Mutual Transport Layer Security (mTLS). This protocol establishes secure connections between your system and Salesforce, verifying the identities of both parties before data exchange. With mTLS, you gain absolute certainty you’re communicating directly with Salesforce and vice versa.

Salesforce offers a Hyperforce IP list to customers with dynamic business operations, huge compliance needs for IP allow listing, or those requiring additional time to implement best practices. However, remember that IP addresses can change frequently in Hyperforce. It’s your responsibility to keep your allowlist updated to avoid disruptions.

3. Understanding Service Name Indicator (SNI) with mTLS:

For successful implementation of the HTTPS protocol with IP allowlisting, Salesforce utilizes the Service Name Indicator (SNI). This security feature, similar to an apartment number within a building, ensures the correct HTTPS certificate is delivered for each specific Salesforce domain within a shared IP address.

4. Important Security Considerations:

Users shouldn’t use pin certificates because this practice is outdated and can cause issues with Hyperforce’s regular certificate rotation. The second is trusting the root certificate list. Trusted authorities in the Mozilla root certificate list validate all Hyperforce certificates.

5. .NET 5.0 or higher: 

Organizations utilizing Platform Events or Streaming Clients require .NET version 5.0 or higher due to compatibility with Hyperforce RFC.

6. Streaming API version 37 or higher: 

Versions 23.0 – 36.0 of the Streaming API may encounter errors in Hyperforce. Upgrade to version 37 or higher for smooth operation.

7. Security Policies:

Your organization’s security policies and compliance requirements may still apply when integrating with third-party systems. Be sure to review and update your security policies as needed to accommodate infrastructure or data residency changes.

Hyperforce Migration Process

When it comes to the Hyperforce migration, the process is relatively seamless and efficient. Salesforce provides its complete support and guidance to ensure a secure and smooth migration process. Here is how it works:

1. Notification for Selected Organizations:

Salesforce will promptly notify organizations selected for Hyperforce migration, providing ample time for preparation and transition planning.

2. Migration Timeline and Downtime Estimates:

A detailed timeline for the migration process, including estimates for any required downtime, will be provided by Salesforce to facilitate effective planning and minimize disruption to business operations.

3. Eligibility Criteria and Deferral Process:

For organizations that do not meet the eligibility criteria for Hyperforce migration, Salesforce will collaborate to address concerns and determine an appropriate deferral process.

4. Maintenance of First-Party Data Centers:

During the transition to Hyperforce, Salesforce will maintain its first-party data centres or maintenance windows, ensuring continuous operational support for organizations undergoing migration.

Final Take

In conclusion, safeguarding your data is crucial during any organization migration, making a robust data protection solution essential. With Cyntexa’s expert support, rest assured your data remains secure throughout the Hyperforce Migration, backed by seamless backup and recovery services.

Our precision repair tools allow you to pinpoint and restore the exact data you need – all without disrupting your post-migration records. Embrace the future of Salesforce with Hyperforce while keeping your valuable data safe and secure. Connect with Cyntexa today for a smooth and worry-free migration.