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Getting support

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Puppet Enterprise 2017.3

  1. Puppet Enterprise support life cycle
    1. Standard releases and long term support releases
    2. Supported Puppet Enterprise versions
    3. Open source tools and libraries
  2. The customer support portal
    1. Puppet Enterprise support script
  3. Getting support from the Puppet community

You can get commercial support for versions of PE in mainstream and limited support. You can also get support from our user community. Learn which versions are supported and how to get help.

Puppet Enterprise support life cycle

There are three phases of product support for each version of PE: mainstream support, limited support, and end-of life (EOL).

Phase Receives security updates and bug fixes? Support response time Help upgrading to a mainstream support version
Mainstream support Yes SLA (service level agreement) response times N/A
Limited support No SLA response times We'll support your upgrade with a variety of assistance and resource options
End-of-life (EOL) No "Commercially reasonable" assistance Contact support for assistance

Standard releases and long term support releases

We encourage you to upgrade to the latest version or latest long term support (LTS) version.

If you want the latest features, install our latest standard release . If you prefer to retain the same version for an extended period, install our latest long term support (LTS) release.
Type of release Release timeframe In mainstream support
Standard Every six months (approximately) Until the next standard or long term support (LTS) release
Long term support (LTS) Every 18 months 24 months after launch

Supported Puppet Enterprise versions

We provide either mainstream or limited support for the versions of PE listed below. PE 3.8 and earlier are now end-of-life (EOL).

PE versions Start mainstream support Start limited support EOL
2017.3October 11, 2017TBDTBD
2017.2 May 11, 2017 November 11, 2017February 21, 2018
2017.1 March 14, 2017 May 11, 2017 February 21, 2018
2016.5 December 13, 2016 March 14, 2017 February 21, 2018
2016.4 (LTS) October 20, 2016 April 20, 2018October 21, 2018
2016.2 June 21, 2016 October 20, 2016 February 21, 2018
2016.1 April 7, 2016 June 21, 2016 February 21, 2018
2015.3 December 8, 2015 April 7, 2016 February 21, 2018
2015.2 July 28, 2015 December 8, 2015 February 21, 2018
3.8 April 28, 2015 December 31, 2016 December 31, 2016

Open source tools and libraries

PE uses open source tools and libraries. We use both externally-maintained components (such as Ruby, PostgreSQL, and the JVM) and projects which we own and maintain (such as Facter, Puppet agent, Puppet Server, and PuppetDB.)

Projects which we own and maintain are "upstream" of our commercial releases. Our open-source projects move faster and have shorter support life cycles than PE. We may discontinue updates to our open-source platform components before their commercial EOL dates. We vet upstream security and feature releases and update supported versions according to customer demand and our Product Security Policy.

The customer support portal

We provide responsive, dependable, quality support to resolve any issues regarding the installation, operation, and use of Puppet Enterprise (PE).

There are two levels of commercial support plans for PE: Standard and Premium. Both allow you to report your support issues to our confidential customer support portal. When you purchase PE, you'll receive an account and log-on for the portal, which includes access to our knowledge base.

Puppet Enterprise support script

When seeking support, you might be asked to run an information-gathering support script. This script collects a large amount of system information, compresses it, and prints the location of the zipped tarball when it finishes running.

The script is provided by the pe_support_script module bundled with the installer. Running the command executes a single bash script which can be found at: /opt/puppetlabs/puppet/cache/lib/puppet_x/puppetlabs/support_script/v1/puppet-enterprise-support.sh

Run the support script on the command line of any PE node running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating systems with the command: /opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppet enterprise support.

Use these options when you run the support script to modify the output:

OptionDescription
--render-as <FORMAT> Specifies what rendering format to use.
--verbose Logs verbosely.
--debug Logs debug information.
--classifier Collects classification data.
--dir <DIRECTORY> Specifies where to save the support script's resulting tarball.
--ticket <NUMBER> Specifies a support ticket number for record-keeping purposes.
--encrypt Encrypts the support script's resulting tarball with GnuPG encryption.
Note: You must have GPG or GPG2 available in your PATH in order to encrypt the tarball.
--log-age Specifies how many days worth of logs the support script collects. Valid values are positive integers or all to collect all logs, up to 1 GB per log.

Information collected by the support script

The support script collects a large amount of system information that can help our Support team troubleshoot issues.

  • iptables info: Is it loaded? What are the inbound and outbound rules for both IPv4 and IPv6?
  • Facter output generated by puppet facts find
  • SELinux status
  • The amount of free disk and memory on the system
  • hostname info: /etc/hosts and the output of hostname --fqdn
  • List of established connections from netstat
  • The output from ifconfig
  • The umask of the system
  • NTP configuration: what servers are available, the offset from them
  • OS and kernel info from uname -a and lsb_release -a (if installed)
  • The state of installed PE packages as reported by the system package manager
  • a list of Ruby gems installed by /opt/puppetlabs/puppet/bin/gem and /opt/puppetlabs/puppetserver/bin/gem
  • the current process list
  • a listing of Puppet certs
  • a listing of all services and their state (such as running/stopped, enabled/disabled)
  • current environment variables
  • whether the Puppet master is reachable
  • the output of mco ping and mco inventory
  • information about the peadmin user used to execute MCollective commands:
    • the client configuration file at: /var/lib/peadmin/.mcollective
    • the client log file at: /var/lib/peadmin/.mcollective.d/client.log
  • the output of ulimit -a for the pe-activemq user along with a count of file descriptors used by the pe-activemq process
  • a list of all Puppet modules on the system
  • the output of puppet module changes (shows if any modules installed by PE have been modified)
  • a listing (no content) of the files in:
    • /opt/puppetlabs
    • /var/log/puppetlabs
    • /var/opt/lib
  • reports the size of the PostgreSQL databases and relations
  • PEPostgreSQL configuration from:
    • /opt/puppetlabs/server/data/postgresql/9.6/data
    • the output of SELECT * FROM pg_settings;
    • the output of SELECT * FROM pg_stat_activity;
  • The configuration used by PE RBAC to connect with a directory service, excluding sensitive information such as passwords
  • r10k information:
    • configuration files
    • output of r10k deploy display -p --detail
  • the output from PE status API endpoints
  • output from the PuppetDB /summary-stats endpoint, which provides non-identifying database statistics for troubleshooting
  • a list of active nodes from PuppetDB
  • a list of active nodes from Orchestration Services
  • a histogram of agent run start times from PuppetDB which is used to detect thundering herds
  • output from the Puppet Server /environments endpoint, which lists available directory environments and module search paths
  • the environment.conf and hiera.yaml configuration files from each environment

It also copies the following files:

  • system logs
  • the contents of /etc/puppetlabs/ (being careful to avoid sensitive files, such as modules, manifests, ssl certs, and MCollective credentials)
  • configuration files for PE services located under /etc/sysconfig or /etc/default and /etc/puppetlabs.
  • the contents of /var/log/puppetlabs/
  • the contents of /opt/puppetlabs/puppet/cache/state/
  • the contents of /opt/puppetlabs/pe_metric_curl_cron_jobs, if present
  • the contents of /etc/resolv.conf
  • the contents /etc/nsswitch.conf
  • the contents of /etc/hosts

Getting support from the Puppet community

As a Puppet Enterprise customer you are more than welcome to participate in our large and helpful open source community as well as report issues against the open source project.

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