Frequently asked support questions:
A support ticket can describe an incident report, problem, or issue with OpenNMS software. For each of these, we request that you open a ticket in the OpenNMS support portal (https://support.opennms.com). Our support team will triage the issue and decide the next course of action.
You may want to open a support ticket for any of the following scenarios:
- You need help with an issue you found during an installation or upgrade.
- You have a general question about something you encountered during the operation of the OpenNMS application.
- You found a bug in our application.
- You want to suggest an enhancement to our application.
To open a support ticket, log into the OpenNMS support portal at https://support.opennms.com. Once the OpenNMS support team receives a support ticket, they'll review and prioritize it to make sure it gets the proper attention. The ticket will then be assigned to a support agent who will start working on it and make sure it's resolved within the associated Service-Level Agreement (SLA).
If a support ticket requests a bug fix or an enhancement, it will be routed to the appropriate OpenNMS team for review and assessment. If a Jira ticket is created to handle this, that ticket number will be added to the support ticket as well. We'll provide a summary of the resolution on the ticket. Note that a bug fix will have an SLA associated with it, but an enhancement request does not.
You should open a ticket in the OpenNMS support portal to address incident reports, problems, or issues with OpenNMS software. Or, you may have a general question or a request for product enhancements. Our support engineers are here to help.
Support tickets are how we share issues and related information with our customers (like logs and configurations), ask questions, provide suggestions, and capture progress and resolution histories. We want to be well-connected with you as a customer to ensure your success—as well as our own.
If in doubt, create a support ticket and we'll reach out.
To open a support ticket, log into the OpenNMS support portal at https://support.opennms.com. Once the OpenNMS support team receives a support ticket, they will review and prioritize it to make sure it gets the proper attention.
Each authorized support contact in your company's support account should have received an email that specifies their individual login. This notification also includes a link to set their initial password and then log in to our support portal. Once the login is verified, these instructions apply to all logins.
Steps to open a case:
- Log in to your OpenNMS support account through https://support.opennms.com.
- Click “Submit a New Ticket”.
- Enter all the necessary details.
- Fill in all the required fields (marked with a *).
- Click "Submit."
You'll receive an email from our system letting you know your support ticket was created. This will also include the ticket number. All future conversations will occur through this ticket. You'll also receive notifications through email when a support agent updates or comments on your ticket.
We offer a variety of support packages, with different options based on your environment and needs. Each package allows for a certain number of Meridian cores, Minions, support for a range of components, support contacts, and more.
We also offer expanded support hours and associated SLAs with our 24/7 support add-on.
See our pricing page to learn more.
We do not currently offer per-incident support.
Our subscription plans offer more than support, though. They give you access to Meridian, the hardened, tested, enterprise version of OpenNMS. They also give you the ability to contact our support engineers to ask questions, resolve incidents, report bugs, and request features and enhancements.
What we support:
- Configuration of OpenNMS data sources and data visualizations included with Helm
- Best-effort diagnostics of the Grafana platform based on general knowledge
What we don’t support
- Grafana itself (diagnosing Grafana failures or scalability, fixing Grafana bugs, and so on)
Note: The Helm referred to here is an application that lets users create flexible dashboards to interact with data stored by OpenNMS.
Note: We'll give our best effort to help determine if a problem exists—in your environment—with a technology stack that OpenNMS uses. We'll often make suggestions based on our exposure and experience with these applications and integrations.
Our plans do not cover support for Linux, PostgreSQL, Grafana, Cassandra, Kafka, or Elasticsearch.
What we support:
- Configuration and diagnostics of the flow and streaming technology listeners in the OpenNMS Core and Minion
- Customization of visualizations in the Helm application
- Support for how to set up OpenNMS to use Elasticsearch (ES) and configuration to the point of the Elasticsearch API
What we don’t support:
- Kafka or Elasticsearch
Note: We'll give our best effort to help determine if a problem exists—in your environment—with a technology stack that OpenNMS uses. We'll often make suggestions based on our exposure and experience with these applications and integrations.
Our plans do not cover support for Linux, PostgreSQL, Grafana, Cassandra, Kafka, or Elasticsearch.
What we support:
- How to set up OpenNMS to use NewTS and OpenNMS configuration to the point of the Cassandra API
What we don’t support:
- Direct support of Cassandra or ScyllaDB clusters (we may suggest only general knowledge and best-effort diagnostics)
PostgreSQL
What we support:
- Basic technical assistance such as setup, configuring access to the PostgreSQL database, and issues related to its interaction with the Meridian Core
What we don’t support:
- Fixes for PostgreSQL bugs or making sure the database is sustained
PostgreSQL Cluster
What we support:
- Help with configuration, advanced troubleshooting, diagnostics, and only maintenance related to the API handoff
What we don’t support:
- Fixes for PostgreSQL bugs or making sure the database is sustained
What we support:
- How to set up OpenNMS to use Kafka and configuration to the point of the Kafka API
What we don’t support:
- Direct support of Kafka (we may suggest only general knowledge and best-effort diagnostics)
Note: We'll give our best effort to help determine if a problem exists—in your environment—with a technology stack that OpenNMS uses. We'll often make suggestions based on our exposure and experience with these applications and integrations.
Our plans do not cover support for Linux, PostgreSQL, Grafana, Cassandra, Kafka, or Elasticsearch.
We have integration with OpenDaylight and will soon complete the project for Cisco ACI.
NFV is on our roadmap.
Provide as much detail about your problem to help us understand what the actual issue might be and assess the area of the application that is causing the issue.
When possible, include the following in your ticket:
- OpenNMS logs that may have been created
- Configuration files
- The severity of the issue
| Severity | Description |
|---|---|
| Critical - Emergency | OpenNMS application failure |
| Urgent | Production is adversely impacted, but still functioning. -or- Production seems fine, but you see some odd behaviors. (This is the severity for most support tickets.) |
| Non-urgent | Non-production cases or questions on potential use cases |
Initial response
(Time to acknowledge the receipt of a support ticket and assign it to a support agent.)
| Severity | Essential | Premier | Premier+ | 24/7 (Urgent tickets only) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Urgent | 4 hrs | 2 hrs | 1 hr | 15 min |
| High | 24 hrs | 24 hrs | 4 hrs | N/A |
| Medium | 48 hrs | 48 hrs | 24 hrs | N/A |
| Low | 48 hrs | 48 hrs | 24 hrs | N/A |
Fixed time issues
(Time to resolve an issue—bug / security fix—that is logged with engineering.)
| Severity | Essential | Premier | Premier+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Urgent | 60 days | 60 days | 60 days |
| High | 90 days | 90 days | 90 days |
| Medium | 90 days | 90 days | 90 days |
| Low | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Except for 24x7 plans, the listed SLA times are calculated within operating hours. For 24x7 plans, the customer can have 2 more contacts to create any emergency support tickets.
Our support hours are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. EST Monday-Friday. 24/7 emergency support is also available as an add-on.
Examples:
- If the Client has a 24/7 support contract and opens an urgent ticket because of application failure outside of the regular 7 a.m. - 7 p.m. EST hours, then it will be responded to within 15 mins and the support team will engage with the client to resolve the issue.
- If a high ticket is created at 6 p.m. EST, then it can be picked up anytime between 6 - 7 p.m. that day or 7 a.m. - 10 a.m. the next business day (4 business hours SLA).
Once you've opened your ticket, we do the following to make sure we consistently deliver high-quality support:
- All new tickets are assigned directly to OpenNMS technical support engineers.
- Based on the situation and the severity, our team of support engineers will contact you within our committed response times.
- Available 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. EST Monday - Friday, unless you have 24/7 support.
You also have access to the ticket, so if you feel like something is not being addressed correctly or you need to provide clarification, you can add those comments to the ticket. There may also be some offline exchange of information.
If the conversation necessitates it, we may request a quick call or screen share to understand the exact issue so we can provide a solution in a timely manner. If you have 24 x 7 support, then you can call the hotline provided to you in cases where a critical issue occurs during support off-hours.
Stay on top of tickets by monitoring and responding to activity and updates in our ticketing tool at https://support.opennms.com.
The OpenNMS Group is committed to providing outstanding and timely help for all of our support customers. In addition to helping our customers via support, we also offer dedicated consulting for more complex or time-intensive engagements. You can purchase consulting engagements in blocks of hours.
Our dedicated OpenNMS SME consultants schedule help sessions tailored to your needs.
For more information about consulting, reach out to your OpenNMS account manager or contact sales at [email protected].
Note that we also are committed to supporting our large and active open source community through our Discourse and Mattermost forums.
Almost all commercial software licenses include costs associated with maintenance on the license and support of the software. Maintenance is what's required to keep software updated to the latest version and get patch updates. Support is what's generally required for asking questions and getting SLAs on bug reports and fixes to issues. In commercially licensed software, these are often combined into a single line item, "Maintenance and Support".
With OpenNMS, we've separated the notion of maintenance and support whereby you can get maintenance without paying for support. This gives you access to the private repositories for the software where you'll get all updates to the software. Support, which requires maintenance, is an additional set of offerings providing support at various levels and features.
After more than 20 years of open source development, the OpenNMS project has attracted a large community of active users. While you can count on us for high-quality support and committed response times, we also encourage you to be involved in our open source community—a rich source of information and resources on all things OpenNMS. Some of the most active contributors to the community channels are also members of our technical support team.
We have extensive official documentation available at https://docs.opennms.com/ for guidance on any specific subject within OpenNMS. We encourage and welcome your participation with documentation as well.
We have active community interactions on the following websites where we provide a lot of information about our products and also help with questions you may have:
- Mattermost: https://chat.opennms.com/opennms/channels/opennms-discussion
- Discourse: https://opennms.discourse.group/
Of course, as a customer, you don't need to rely on these communities for your critical or confidential support needs. For those needs, we strongly recommend using our support portal.
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