What is Hyperforce:

According to Salesforce:

Hyperforce is the next-generation Salesforce infrastructure architecture built for the public cloud. Hyperforce infrastructure is composed of code rather than hardware so that the Salesforce platform and applications can be delivered rapidly and reliably to locations worldwide, giving customers more choice and control over data residency. Salesforce products running on Hyperforce benefit from its integration of enhanced standards for compliance, security, agility, and scalability and from Salesforce’s continued commitment to privacy. By providing a common foundation for deploying our application stacks, Hyperforce accelerates Salesforce’s ability to innovate across product clouds and deliver additional business value to customers.

Hyperforce Delivers:

• Data Residency  – Hyperforce lets customers serve their employees and customers globally while providing choice and control for residency and compliance.
• Scalability  – Customers will be able to grow and scale their business more flexibly and sustainably.
• Security  – Hyperforce is secure by default, with least-privileged control, zero-trust principles, and encryption of customer data at-rest and in-transit.
• Privacy  – Hyperforce provides comprehensive privacy standards that help give customers control and transparency over their customers’ data.
• Agility  – Hyperforce increases agility with no downtime for releases and general maintenance, faster dev and test environments, and enormous new interoperability with AWS. (Downtime may be required during org migrations or for major technology upgrades.)

Courtesy: Introducing Hyperforce – General Information & FAQ

Source: Salesforce

The sandboxes are typically moved in the weeks before production, but some might be moved after. The migration process is not automated and requires some work on the customer side. The sandboxes are typically moved four weeks in advance of the production organization.

The selection of AWS servers is not based on the customer’s country but on the company’s billing address. Sandboxes will be moved in the same way as production. The Hyperforce migration has no direct impact on users, as it is just an infrastructure refresh. Experience Cloud connected to the sandbox or production will also be affected by this change.

Hyperforce will move to the latest and greatest hardware and remove future needs for instance refresh, which can be perceived as a performance increase. However, Hyperforce enables Salesforce to do great things in the future regarding scalability and other aspects.

One of the important aspects of the Hyperforce Migration is the migration timeline.

Source: Salesforce

The above-depicted timeline brings complexity for enterprises that rely heavily on integrations for data movement. Especially, read-only time duration can cause multiple integration failures if not handled efficiently.

Notable Implications and Remedial Actions:

1. Check if existing inbound integrations are queue-based: If yes, then check maximum queue depth against the anticipated inbound traffic towards Salesforce; adjust queue depth according to the requirements – temporarily. Remember to revert queue depth.
2. For HTTP-based Inbound integrations, check if integrations can be re-triggered – e.g. from the source system or middleware.
3. Email to Case & Web to Lead: Messages will not be lost but will stay in the queue. Understand the business impact and let the business team know the potential consequences.
4. Service Cloud Voice, Amazon Connect, or CTI solutions – As Salesforce will not be available – analyze the business impact together with the Salesforce team
5. AppExchange Products – Not all AppExchange products might be impacted, but there could be some AppExchange products by which data in Salesforce gets updated based on trigger initiation that happens externally. Connect to AppExchange provider to ensure Salesforce downtime will not have a diverse impact on data and working of the AppExchange.
6. Control data re-trigger from the external system in such a way that it is acceptable to the Salesforce limits once migration gets completed. Watch out: API limits + Concurrency.
7. Experience Cloud: Visitors to communities, portals or sites that are in read-only mode will see a ‘Maintenance is in Progress’ message. 
8. Updating Hard-Coded References
9. Impact on ChatBots – Customers using Salesforce chatbot need to ensure that the chatbot button is disabled from their website during the maintenance window. Re-associate any bots to the channels for which they were deployed (i.e. chat, messaging, etc.). Customers will need to re-train any NLP models in their bots.
10. Outbound Integrations: If there is initiation of any data movement in the downstream system from Salesforce e.g. scheduled batch apex during migration window etc. ensure these data updates flow smoothly post-Hyperforce migration
11. Geography: Consider the business impact; having a European-based org but serving west-coast US customers through a call center might have an impact on downtime.
12. Delay the batch apex processes.
13. Marketing Cloud Integration: Connect with the Salesforce Account team on the impact on other Salesforce products, especially with Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud Sync. Ensure that you have enabled Tenant-Specific OAuth Endpoints for Marketing Cloud Connect. This is a prerequisite before migrating to Hyperforce.
14. It seems to be prevalent sense – One should not plan any deployment during the Hyperforce migration window.
15. Always be watchful about any communication sent from Salesforce on Hyperforce Migration.
16. Use Hyperforce assistant to perform impact analysis.
17. As usual, test, test, and test in the post-hyperforce migrated sandbox environment to locate areas of concern.
18. Use Test read-only mode functionality in a sandbox – Test read only mode functionality in a sandbox (salesforce.com)

Conclusion:

Hyperforce migration is mandatory according to Salesforce’s plans for the future. Do not take it lightly if the customer’s landscape has multiple integrations. Evaluate each integration point and business impact before committing to the Hyperforce migration.

Each customer and their Salesforce setup is different, and it is not possible to cover some of the scenarios in this article. Please conduct a thorough analysis and communicate business impact effectively to avoid any problems.

References:

• How to Prepare for an Org Migration (salesforce.com)
• Test read only mode functionality in a sandbox (salesforce.com)
• Read-Only Mode Overview (salesforce.com)
• Enabling Tenant-Specific OAuth Endpoints for Marketing Cloud Connect (salesforce.com)
• Updating Hard-Coded References 
• Read-Only Mode Overview
• View instance information for your Salesforce organization
• Where is my Salesforce instance located?
• Plan around the Preferred Salesforce Maintenance Schedule
• If your company practices allow listing: Salesforce IP Addresses to Allow
• If you are a Hyperforce customer: Retain uninterrupted access to Salesforce services on Hyperforce
• If you are a Hyperforce customer: Preferred Alternatives to IP Allowlisting on Hyperforce
• If you are a Hyperforce customer: The in-app Hyperforce Assistant
• If you locally cache certificates: Certificate Changes group in the Trailblazer Community