24×7×365 technical support for Postgres Pro

Facing database performance issues? Our Tier 2 and Tier 3 support contracts cover monitoring, incident analysis, performance audits, and DBMS troubleshooting by experienced DBAs.

• Glossary
• Types of Technical Support Services
• Reporting Problems
• Customer and Contractor Obligations
  • Contractor Obligations
  • Customer Obligations
• Minimal Assistance
• Limitation of Liability
• Appendix 1: Supported Software
  • Company DBMS
  • Open Source Community DBMS
  • Company Software: Utilities and Extensions
  • Third-Party Software: Utilities and Extensions
• Appendix 2: Technical Support Services
  • Description
  • The Technical Support Service Provision Procedure
  • Scope of the Technical Support Services
  • Requirements for the Customer's Personnel
  • Ticket Priority and Service Level
    • Resolution Time
    • Bug Fix Time
• Appendix 3: Consulting Services
  • Description
  • The ETS Service Provision Procedure
• Appendix 4: Service Provision Procedure on the Technical Support Portal
  • License Set
  • User Registration and Management
  • Access to Repositories and Installation of Postgres Pro Products
  • Configurations
  • Knowledge Base
  • Working with Tickets
    • List of Tickets, Filters, and Search
    • Tickets via Email
    • Ticket Stages
    • Ticket Statuses
    • Ticket Priorities
    • Ticket Submission
    • The P1 Highest Priority Tickets
    • Escalation

Glossary

Certificate
A printed or electronic document that entitles the Customer or its legal representatives to receive services provided by the Company during the period specified in the certificate, within the stated scope and according to the selected support scheme.

Company
Postgres Professional Limited Liability Company (PPG LLC or its subsidiary PPG Development LLC).

Contractor
A legal entity or a Company representative that provides technical support services to the Customer.

Critical problem
A problem that is addressed under a ticket with the P1 or P2 priority.

Customer
A legal entity or its representative authorized to receive technical support services from the Company.

DBMS
A database management system.

DBMS edition
A DBMS variant representing PostgreSQL or a PostgreSQL fork. Postgres Pro editions shall mean different DBMS products of the Company.

DBMS malfunction (code error, bug)
Abnormal DBMS behavior causing operational failures in the Customer's information system and leading to error messages, or behavior that contradicts the documented specifications.

Escalation
A process of drawing attention to a problem in a particular ticket.

Hotline
A single point of entry for technical support requests from customers. Operates 24x7.

Incident
Abnormal behavior of an information system, which usually results in degradation of its performance.

Information system
A software-hardware complex that performs complete functions and is used in the Customer’s company operations.

Knowledge base
A section with useful information on the technical support portal.

License
A printed or electronic document that is issued by the Company and entitles the Customer and its legal representatives to use the Company's software provided under certain conditions for a specified period of time.

License set
A set of multiple licenses and/or certificates logically combined into a single entity under which the Customer's users interact with the technical support service.

Open source
A method of software development and licensing that allows everyone to freely distribute (or sell) software, freely modify it (keeping information about its authors in the code), freely publish their own improvements, and freely access its source code.

OS
Operating system.

Partner
A company authorized by the Customer and entitled to request technical support on the Customer's behalf.

Problem
A cause of one or more incidents.

Request
A case of interaction between the Client and the technical support service.

Service Level Agreement, SLA
Measurable service quality standards for the Contractor's response to Customer requests.

Supported software
The software developed by the Company or a third-party developer. This is the software for which the Company provides technical support.

System classes:

• Mission-critical system, MCS
  A Customer's critically important information system operating 24x7. Even short-term downtime of such a system would immediately disrupt enterprise functionality and cause significant financial losses.

• Business-critical system, BCS
  A Customer's information system that operates 24x7 and whose downtime in the medium term causes financial losses and reputational damage. In the short term, however, this system can perform its functions with slight service quality degradation.

• Business support system, BSS
  A Customer's information system that is used in the work but not required to be operational 24x7. A short-term shutdown of this system is permitted.

• Operation support system, OSS
  An information system used by the Customer's operating departments, where midterm downtime will not affect the service quality and operation of other systems.

For budgetary or nonprofit organizations, the term “financial losses” may be replaced with the “failure to fulfill obligations” in the definitions above.

Technical support, TS
A set of agreed actions taken by the Customer and the Contractor to maintain the proper operation of the software.

Technical support client (Client)
A person requesting technical support, who may or may not possess valid technical support certificates.

Technical support portal, Ticket Management System (TMS)
A software-hardware complex of the Company used to collect and process tickets as well as regulate ticket handling.

Technical support service, TS service
A Company department responsible for technical support.

Ticket
A Customer request for technical support services made following a certain procedure.

Ticket priority
An identifier of the ticket importance and urgency that is specified based on this document. Priority definitions are listed in the Service Level Agreement (SLA).

User
An account of the Company's Client on the technical support portal.

Workaround
A recommendation that helps to reduce or eliminate the impact of an incident or a problem, which cannot be completely and correctly fixed at the moment.

Working day
A time interval from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. IST (UTC +05:30), Monday through Friday, except for weekends and public holidays.

Working hour
A clock hour during the working day.

Types of Technical Support Services

The Company provides the following basic services:

• Technical Support services as described in Appendix 2

• Consulting services as described in Appendix 3

Based on these basic services, the Company provides the following technical support services:

• Standard Technical Support, STS
  The services of Technical Support provided according to purchased technical support certificates.
• Extended Technical Support, ETS
  The sevices of Consulting that are provided according to purchased extended technical support certificates in addition to the valid certificates for the Standard Technical Support.

For those who use the software supported by the Company and do not have valid STS or ETS certificates, the Company provides minimal technical support at no extra charge, its scope is described in the Minimal Assistance section.

Reporting Problems

To report a problem to the technical support service:

• Create a ticket on the technical support portal: https://support.postgrespro.com/

• Email us at: support@postgrespro.com, consulting@postgrespro.com

• Call +7 (495) 789-47-69

Technical support is not provided through other channels, such as forums, Skype, ICQ, Google Talk, Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber, other instant messaging services, etc., as well as through personal phones or corporate emails. Questions submitted through these channels are not considered official communications and will not be registered. Such means of communication are considered to be ancillary only.

Submitting a request opens a ticket on the technical support portal, and this ticket is assigned a unique ID. This ID should be specified in all further interactions under the request.

Customer and Contractor Obligations

Contractor Obligations

The Contractor shall:

• Ensure that the hotline is available for the Customer 24x7.

• Ensure that Customer's requests are received, registered, and prioritized in the form of tickets.

• Give recommendations on troubleshooting operational problems of the supported software.

• Fix bugs in the software developed and supported by the Company or send bug reports to original developers of the supported software.

• Provide access to the history of Customer's requests.

• Ensure that Customer's problems are properly escalated as per the ticket priorities.

Customer Obligations

The Customer shall:

• Use only properly licensed software.

• Ensure the proper operation of the hardware where the DBMS is deployed as well as all the necessary infrastructure and software interacting directly with the DBMS.

• Provide first-line support by receiving and processing end-user (business user) requests.

• Ensure qualified technical personnel are available at the DBMS operational site for liaison with the TS service.

• Perform all required backup and restore procedures for DBMS servers.

• Promptly provide information requested in tickets and track the transmitted diagnostic information.

• Follow recommendations received from the technical support specialists and notify them of the results. If the recommendations cannot be applied, provide a relevant explanation in a prompt and reasoned manner.

• Escalate tickets if necessary.

Minimal Assistance

Natural and legal entities with no valid technical support certificates may receive the following types of assistance at no extra charge:

• Responses to all commercial inquiries.

• Subscription to technical bulletins and newsletters about new releases and upgrades.

• Access to documentation for current versions of the Company or PostgreSQL software, available in English.

• The Company may respond to technical questions with no agreed response time or leave such questions unanswered without explanation.

Limitation of Liability

The Company and its affiliates shall not be liable for and shall not compensate direct or indirect damages, including lost profit, as well as any costs, fines, and expenses of any kind, loss of Customer information, including confidential information, expenses due to data or documentation loss or damage, or due to the third-party liability regardless of the reasons for its occurrence, caused by violation and/or misuse of the software, or resulting from the wrongful acts of the Customer personnel or third parties, or technical equipment malfunctions and electrical failures.

The Company and its affiliates shall not be liable for and shall not compensate direct or indirect damages, including lost profit, as well as any costs, fines, and expenses of any kind, loss of Customer information, including confidential information, expenses due to data or documentation loss or damage, or due to the third-party liability regardless of the reasons for its occurrence, caused by any reason in the direct provision of consulting services unless it is proved that the Company had the intention to cause damage in providing such services.

The above limitations of liability and exclusions of specific cases of damages shall apply regardless of whether any provisions of agreements concluded between the Customer and the Contractor are violated and regardless of whether individual provisions of such agreements are declared invalid or null and void by the court.

Technical support end dates for all versions of the Postgres Pro DBMS are the same as those for the international version of PostgreSQL.

For technical support end dates for different DBMS versions, please visit the official website at https://www.postgrespro.com/services/support.

Appendix 1: Supported Software

The supported software is listed on the Company's website.

Below is the most recent list of supported software.

Company DBMS

The Company releases the following DBMS editions under license (see the license text at https://www.postgrespro.com/products/postgrespro/eula):

• Postgres Pro Standard

• Postgres Pro Enterprise

• Postgres Pro Shardman

All versions and editions of the Company's DMBS are installed and upgraded using online repositories.

The technical support covers extensions and utilities included in the DBMS. These supported extensions and utilities are included in the contrib package of the relevant DBMS version.

To support its DBMS, the Company fixes bugs and releases new minor versions.

Open Source Community DBMS

Together with the international community, the Company develops the DBMS, which is distributed under the license provided at https://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/.

• PostgreSQL

Original or vanilla edition developed by the PostgreSQL international developer community.
The term "vanilla" is used to explicitly name this DBMS edition.

The technical support covers extensions and utilities included in the contrib package of the DBMS.

To support PostgreSQL, the Company prepares bug fix patches and sends them to the international community. However, the Company cannot guarantee that these fixes will be included in the PostgreSQL release, nor can it guarantee the exact day when these fixes will be included as it depends on the international community.

Company Software: Utilities and Extensions

The technical support covers extensions and utilities for different DBMS editions listed above and included in the software supported by the Company.

When providing technical support for utilities and extensions, the Contractor does the following:

• Provides binary packages to be used together with the Company DBMS.

• Helps to install extensions and utilities.

• Helps in addressing technical problems when the software shows error messages or deviates from documented behavior.

• Fixes bugs.

Third-Party Software: Utilities and Extensions

Postgres Pro repositories contain the following utilities and extensions (which may be unavailable for some platforms, editions, and major versions of the DBMS):

• PostGIS

• TimescaleDB (1)

• citus

• corosync/pacemaker (2)

• patroni

• stolon (3)

• plv8

• pljava

• plpgsql_check

• pldebugger

• apache_age

• oracle_fdw

• orafce

• tds_fdw

• pg_hint_plan

• hypopg

• pgvector

• pg_filedump

• pgbouncer

• pg_repack

• psqlodbc

• pgbadger

Notes:

(1) Under license agreements, TimescaleDB cannot be supplied together with commercial software, including the Postgres Pro DBMS. Contact our technical support if you need help installing the extension.

(2) The corosync and pacemaker cluster software are usually part of an operating system.

(3) The stolon cluster software is installed from the GitHub repository.

The technical support covers the software listed above if the Customer has a valid support certificate for this particular product. The presence of third-party utilities and extensions in the Company's DBMS repositories does not mean that they are supported by the Company. The Company builds and provides binary packages of popular third-party utilities and extensions for the Customers' convenience so that they do not have to build them themselves. The number of such binary packages will increase in the future.

However, not all third-party utilities and extensions can be built for all supported operating systems and hardware due to their specific features. For example, the oracle_fdw extension depends on Oracle software.

When providing technical support for third-party utilities and extensions, the Contractor does the following:

• Provides binary packages to be used together with the Company DBMS.

• Helps to install software, extensions, and utilities.

• Helps in addressing technical problems when the software shows error messages or deviates from documented behavior.

• Submits bug reports to the original authors of utilities and extensions.

Appendix 2: Technical Support Services

Description

The technical support aims at supporting the stable operation and addressing operational problems of the Customer's information system.

When providing technical support, the Company does the following:

• Access to information about purchased licenses and certificates as well as their expiration dates.

• Access to binary repositories to install and upgrade the Company software during the certificate validity period.

• Assistance to install the software from binary packages and resolution for problems that occur when installing the software as self-compiled.

• Acceptance for support requests via the hotline:

  • Answers phone calls at +7 (495) 789-47-69.

  • Creates new tickets when receiving emails at support@postgrespro.com.

  • Provides access to the technical support portal at https://support.postgrespro.com/ where the Client can:

    • Create a new ticket and track its progress.

    • Access the archive of closed tickets and tickets of other employees of the Customer.

    • Consult the knowledge base.

• Fulfills the SLA requirements with regard to hotline requests.

• Answers technical questions within the scope of the technical support functions:

  • DBMS administration

  • Technical aspects of the DBMS operation

  • DBMS upgrade

  • Backup/restore of the DBMS and its components and database data

  • Work with documentation

• Assistance in technical problems resolution within the scope of the technical support functions:

  • Root cause analysis of the problem

  • Search for the problem reproduction scenario

  • Search for a workaround to a critical problem

  • Troubleshooting tips

  • Tips on how to restore corrupted data

• Bugs processing in the supported software:

  • Company software:

    • Identifies and fixes bugs in recent versions.

    • Includes bug fixes in the new software versions.

  • PostgreSQL:

    • Identifies and fixes bugs in recent versions.

    • Publishes bug fix patches available to the public.

  • Third-Party Software (except for PostgreSQL):

    • Identifies bugs in recent versions.

    • Submits bug reports to the respective software developers.

Technical support is provided remotely.

When the technical support certificate expires, the services, including access to repositories, are provided in full during a special grace period for one calendar month. After the end of this period, customers can expect only the minimal assistance.

The Technical Support Service Provision Procedure

The technical support is provided based on tickets created in accordance with Appendix 4 Service Provision Procedure on the Technical Support Portal.

Scope of the Technical Support Services

The technical support covers only the software specified in the valid technical support certificates.

The technical support shall not cover any software not specified in the certificate as well as any hardware of the Customer.

To address any problems with regard to third-party software and hardware, it is necessary to contact technical support of the relevant manufacturers. All problems related to technical and network infrastructure shall be within the Customer's area of responsibility and shall not be included in the scope of the Company's technical support.

The technical support shall not cover the cases when a malfunction is caused by the Customer's violation of recommendations contained in the software documentation or recommendations received from the technical support specialists.

The technical support does not include the services described in ETS:

• Any works performed by the Contractor at the Customer's site or remotely

• Topical workshops on software functionality, extensions, and utilities as well as their use 

• Detailed instructions or other documents as required by the Customer, including technical statements

• Architecture design or selection of optimal solutions based on the Customer's requirements

• Analysis of behavior, optimization, and selection of optimal parameters of the Customer's information system

• Participation in project works of the Customer: software setup and configuration, data preparation and migration

The Contractor may render these services additionally as ETS.

Requirements for the Customer's Personnel

The DBMS operation requires appropriate technical expertise. The Company provides technical support remotely, so the Customer's on-site personnel shall be qualified to gather necessary technical information requested by the Contractor and follow the received recommendations.

The Customer shall ensure that their personnel have the required technical qualifications.

Minimum requirements:

• Basic knowledge of OS and DBMS administration within the scope of the DBA1 course (https://postgrespro.com/community/courses/DBA1)

• Ability to work with the server console

The Company's technical support specialists do not interact with end users of the Customer's systems, and the stated service level for such requests is not guaranteed.

The Company reserves the right to refuse interaction with the Customer's employees who do not possess the proper technical qualifications.

Ticket Priority and Service Level

The table below explains the ticket processing time for each priority level:

The priorities are set only for support tickets related to the products for which the Client has a valid technical support certificate. Other tickets are not prioritized.

For non-priority support requests, responses are provided at the Company's discretion, and such requests may be closed without explanation.

Support ticket priority is initially set based on criticality assessment questions and may be subsequently adjusted by the Contractor as needed.

Tickets containing requests for additional services (consulting, ETS) have no priority and are processed as per the approved work schedule. Before starting to work on these tickets, the schedule and scope of works shall be agreed. The works are performed during business hours only.

Resolution Time

1. For the service level purposes, work time of the technical support service starts being recorded only after the ticket is assigned to a responsible person. The Client's response time or expectancy of external events agreed with the Client are not included in determining the service level parameters.

2. The Client's working schedule with regard to the ticket shall correspond to the priority requested in this ticket, i.e. 24x7 or 9 hours a day, 5 days a week.

3. Response time. For a new request, this shall mean the time during which a ticket is processed, a responsible person is assigned, and the notification thereof is sent to the Client.

4. Resolution time. This shall mean the time during which the Contractor requests all the necessary information and, if the available technical information is sufficient, prepares an exhaustive response and/or offers options for resolving the problem. Implementing technical support recommendations may take considerable time, for example restoration from a backup, and is not included in the SLA.

5. If the Customer gives a reasoned explanation why the presented solution is unacceptable or provides additional information that proves the solution inapplicable, the Contractor shall prepare a new solution, but the ticket resolution time will be reset in this case.

6. If the wait time for information from the Customer exceeds the resolution time set in the ticket (4 hours for P1, etc.), then the Contractor may lower the priority of this ticket.

7. Failure to follow the technical support recommendations shall discharge the Contractor from meeting the service level parameters.

8. Failure of the Customer's personnel to meet the required level of expertise specified in the Requirements for the Customer's Personnel section may result in unforeseen delays in resolving the problem, and the service level shall not be guaranteed for such tickets.

9. When opening a ticket of the P1 Highest priority or providing information thereunder, it is required to contact the technical support via the hotline.

10. The ticket priority may change in the course of the works. It may be raised if new developments increase the problem criticality or lowered if an acceptable workaround is found.

11. Work under the tickets continues until the problem is resolved or as long as there is headway in resolving the problem.

Bug Fix Time

1. The bug fix time specified in the service level pertains only to the cases when the Customer provides information sufficient to reproduce the problem using internal resources of the Company. The technical support service may help the Customer to reproduce the problem.

2. Different bug fix procedures are described below:

   • For the Company software: errors are identified, fixed, and bug fixes are included in latest software versions.

   • For the PostgreSQL DBMS: errors are identified, and bug fix patches are published available to the public.

   • For third-party software: errors are identified, and requests are submitted to the relevant software developers.

3. The bug fix time for the service level purposes applies only to the Company software specified in the technical support certificate as well as to PostgreSQL.

4. In case of an emergency and with regard to critical priorities, bug fixes may be passed to the Customer in the form of a patch (for the open-source software) or a special binary build. This bug fix method is not recommended as the primary one, since such builds do not go through all the required version release procedures. The bug fix binary builds shall be replaced with the officially released latest software version, which contains the required fix, as soon as it becomes available.

5. The Company may, at its discretion, resort to unscheduled releases to fix critical problems in its software.

6. For PostgreSQL, bug fix patches are published, but both the decision whether to include them in the release and the exact day of such an inclusion are not guaranteed since it depends on the entire community that develops PostgreSQL.

Appendix 3: Consulting Services

Description

If the Customer wishes to receive a wider range of services than those offered under the Standard Technical Support, they can purchase the Extended Technical Support certificate. This certificate includes consulting services and is only purchased together with the Standard Technical Support for the same time period. Otherwise, the consulting certificate must be purchased.

ETS may include the following services:

• Participating in project works

• Gathering diagnostic data and implementing recommendations in the Client's systems

• Analyzing and reviewing incidents, additionally investigating the infrastructure and applied software

• Optimizing queries and applied software, developing recommendations to reconfigure the DBMS

• Conducting technical audits of the Customer systems

• Providing expert assistance in setting up the DBMS and the environment: monitoring systems, backups

• Elaborating cluster solutions

• Helping with migration, including migration from other DBMS types

• Developing custom applied software based both on Postgres Pro and DBMS functionality (extensions)

• Providing support when launching systems into commercial operation

• Helping to optimize applied systems of the Customer

• Conducting topical workshops for the Customer's specialists on the Company products functionality

• Conducting training courses as part of standard programs (https://postgrespro.com/community/courses)

• Providing other services as agreed

The scope and timeline of work shall be agreed between the Customer and the Contractor case by case under the relevant ticket.

SLA Table for ETS

Requests for ETS are received in accordance with Appendix 4 Service Provision Procedure on the Technical Support Portal. If a request falls outside the STS scope, the Contractor shall notify the Customer and reclassify the open ticket as an ETS request.

To open an ETS ticket, select the consulting domain on the technical support portal or send a request to consulting@postgrespro.com. 

ETS requests shall meet the same requirements as STS requests, with one exception: for ETS requests, services will only be provided after mutual agreement is reached between the Customer and Contractor regarding the service scope, list, and schedule.

ETS is provided only by mutual agreement of the parties. If the parties do not agree on the list, schedule of services, and the labor costs, the received request for ETS may be closed by the Contractor unilaterally.

The ETS service approval procedures are only held during business hours.

The ETS provision process may include all or some of the following stages:

1. Ticket submission

2. Service approval

3. Work execution

4. Acceptance — ticket closure by the Customer/Contractor, confirming work completion

The ETS Service Provision Procedure

To receive ETS, it is necessary to be registered in accordance with Appendix 4 Service Provision Procedure on the Technical Support Portal.

When contacting the technical support service under the ETS certificate, the Client shall provide the certificate number along with the problem description.

The requests are registered automatically.

If the registration is successful, the Client receives an email.

For ETS certificates that require Contractor labor cost tracking, the following procedure is applied:

• At the stage of labor cost agreement, standard packaged services may be used to determine the scope and composition of the services to be provided, if it corresponds to the Customer's task. Otherwise, alternative services may be selected, based on the composition, labor costs, and schedule mutually agreed upon by the Parties.

• When preparing a response to a request, the Contractor performing the work under this ticket records the labor costs incurred to prepare a response for the entire request or a part of it.

• If the work under the ticket, including preparation of a response to the entire request or a part of it, requires no significant effort from the Contractor (not more than 4 working hours), the Contractor records the labor costs unilaterally without additional approval from the Client.

• If it takes considerable time to prepare a response (more than 4 working hours), the Contractor shall inform the Client of it, provide a list of necessary steps to prepare a response, and estimate labor costs for these steps. 

• The Contractor continues to work under the ticket after the Client confirms the labor costs specified by the Contractor.

The Service Level Agreement governing work completion timelines does not apply to the ETS services.

The current stage of the ticket is reflected in the progress section. The following stages are used:

• Approval — the work scope, schedule, and Contractor's labor costs are being approved

• In progress — the Contractor performs work on the ticket

• Acceptance — work under the ticket is completed, results are being approved

After the work results are accepted, the ticket may be closed in one of the following ways:

• The Client closes the ticket on the technical support portal; the status changes to ACL (automatic closure).

• The Contractor closes the ticket, and the Customer does not have any objections within 7 calendar days.

Appendix 4: Service Provision Procedure on the Technical Support Portal

The technical support portal can be found at https://support.postgrespro.com/. It is used for the interaction between Customers and the Company.

License Set

The Customer and the Company interact under a license set. All licenses and certificates purchased by the Customer as well as all the tickets are linked to this set. The license set is also used to access repositories to install the Company's products. To access tickets, users need to establish a link to the relevant license set.

If a user has registered several license sets (for example, working as a consultant in several projects), it is possible to switch between the sets in the drop-down list of the top menu. The technical support portal shows tickets, licenses, certificates, repository access, and user rights pertaining only to the selected license set.

User Registration and Management

When licenses and certificates are being issued, the Contractor shall register contact persons specified in the order on the technical support portal, and they are granted administrator rights in the license set. A welcome letter is automatically sent to their email, containing instructions on how to work with the technical support portal. When new licenses are issued or existing licenses are revoked, the license set administrators automatically receive notification letters. Other users shall register on the technical support portal by themselves.

To be able to open a ticket on behalf of an organization, it is necessary to link an account to a license set of this organization. After that, the license set administrator shall approve access to the set and grant the relevant rights. The license set can be added either when registering on the technical support portal or later in the profile. To register on the portal, specify a number of a valid technical support certificate from the target license set. Information from the license set will only be available to a user when the administrator of the set grants access to the user.

There are several access levels:

• Administrator. This role can perform all actions on the technical support portal, including granting access to other users and managing access to repositories. It also manages all other users of the license set.

• User. This role can perform all actions with tickets and is intended for ordinary users.

• View only. This access level only allows you to view tickets without the permission to respond. It suits those users who should not work with tickets but need to view their progress.

• Restricted access. This access level allows you to work with your own tickets or tickets with the view only access level. Other tickets are not visible. This access level suits those specialists who are involved in project works for specific tasks.

Note that the account on the technical support portal (support.postgrespro.com) is not the same as the account on the main Postgres Pro website (postgrespro.com).

Access to Repositories and Installation of Postgres Pro Products

Most Postgres Pro products are distributed from online repositories, where binary packages are available for the initial setup and upgrade using standard package managers of server OS.

Online repositories used for the Postgres Pro installation are accessed using access keys, which allow identifying a client and their license set and automatically grant access to all repositories in accordance with valid technical support certificates. When the product's technical support period expires, access to the relevant repository closes automatically.

Access keys are confidential and should be protected from unauthorized access and data leakage, just like any other password. If an access key gets compromised, for example, becomes publicly available, it may be revoked, and a new key may be generated. To do this, go to the top menu, Administration → License Set → Repositories. Here, you can also view active and revoked access keys to repositories.

To learn more, visit the knowledge base on the technical support portal.

Configurations

When working with tickets, sometimes it is necessary to learn more about the DBMS instance where a problem has been discovered. For this purpose, you can use a diagnostic script that gathers main information about the server, i.e. its hardware, operating system, and DBMS. If you upload a report generated by this script in the ticket, the technical support portal will automatically recognize and attach it to the existing configuration (if reports were previously uploaded for this DBMS instance) or create a new one. The current configuration may also be specified when opening a new ticket.

All existing configurations are available from the top menu, Administration → License Set → Configurations.

Knowledge Base

The knowledge base contains articles with useful information broken down in tree structure sections. You can search through all available articles.

Working with Tickets

The Customer and the Contractor interact through tickets according to the following basic workflow:

1. Open a ticket.

2. Describe a problem and specify all the necessary technical information (see below).

3. Receive and implement recommendations from the Contractor or provide additionally requested information.

4. Confirm that the problem is resolved to close the ticket.

Detailed instructions about how to work with tickets can be found on the technical support portal.

List of Tickets, Filters, and Search

To open a list of tickets, go to the top menu of the technical support portal and select tickets. You can filter the results and use some preset filters to view your tickets, escalated tickets, all opened tickets, etc. The default filter shows all opened tickets unless another filter is selected. You can also set a custom filter by clicking the funnel icon, selecting values and field ranges. For a complex filter, select subfilters. You can save your custom filter, delete the previously saved ones, and define fields to be displayed in the list of tickets and select their sorting order. You cannot delete preset filters.

You can open an existing ticket from the list to view and work with it.

To open a new ticket, click Create Ticket in the top menu, specify the domain as per the expected service (consulting, technical support, sales), subject and description, and fill in all additional fields depending on the selected domain.

The Customer and the Contractor interact in the ticket comments. To write a comment, open the ticket on the technical support portal and insert text in the input field located at the bottom of the page. You can drag and drop or copy and paste images as well as attach files. If you attach a file containing the diagnostic script report, the system will automatically create the configuration. The input field supports WYSIWYG editing and Markdown-like syntax.

All changes in tickets are reflected in email notifications from the technical support portal. You can subscribe users to these changes by adding them to the follower list.

To close the ticket, click the relevant button while inside it.

Tickets via Email

You can work with the technical support portal tickets using your email. There are some restrictions to this method, for example, you cannot view the ticket history or access the closed ticket archive. You also miss out on other technical support portal functionality. And still, ticket notifications sent from the portal contain extensive information, which allows you to work with tickets even via email.

Sending a new email to technical support addresses opens a new ticket. A response to the ticket notification email from the technical support portal creates a new ticket comment if the ticket number is specified in the email heading and the email sender has permission to add comments to the ticket. Emails specified in CC will be added to the follower list.

Ticket Stages

Consulting tickets have stages that reflect the current progress. They are as follows:

• Agreement — the work scope and timelines are being agreed and approved

• In Progress — the Contractor performs work in accordance with the approved schedule

• Acceptance — work is completed by the Contractor, results are being accepted by Client

Ticket Statuses

The current ticket state is reflected in its status, which may be as follows:

• NEW — a new ticket status

• WIP — work in progress

• CUS — recommendations are provided and/or additional information is requested from the Client

• HLD — expecting external events (for example, a bug fix or version release)

• ACL — the ticket is automatically closed due to the Client's inactivity for over 7 calendar days

• CLS — the ticket is closed, all works are completed, but the ticket can still be reopened

• CLX — the ticket is closed and cannot be reopened

New tickets are opened with the NEW status. Any change in the ticket (an attached file or an added comment) will switch its status to WIP, while a closed CLS ticket will be reopened. If the Client does not respond in the CUS ticket within 7 calendar days, its status will be changed to ACL, and after another 7 days it will be finally closed. The CLX ticket cannot be reopened. If you need to continue working on the issue from this ticket, open a new ticket and provide a link to the CLX one.

Ticket Priorities

Technical support tickets may have the following priorities:

• P1 Highest — the problem is critical, which means that the DBMS cannot commercially operate with the Customer's mission-critical system or business-critical system. The Customer and the Contractor work to resolve the problem 24x7.

• P2 High — the problem is critical, which means that the DBMS cannot commercially operate with the Customer's mission-critical system or business-critical system. The Customer and the Contractor work to resolve the problem during business hours (9 hours a day, 5 days a week).

• P3 Medium — the problem is critical (see above), but the Customer's information system is not in commercial operation, or is not the mission-critical system or business-critical system, or the system operates with minor limitations, or there is a workaround for the problem. The Customer and the Contractor work to resolve the problem during business hours (9 hours a day, 5 days a week).

• P4 Low — the problem is non-critical, either occurring in the test environment or not leading to the unavailability of critical functionality or data loss, or it is a documentation problem or cosmetic in nature. This is a priority for all consultations and information requests. The Customer and the Contractor work to resolve the problem during business hours (9 hours a day, 5 days a week).

The priorities are set only for support tickets related to the products for which the Client has a valid technical support certificate. Other tickets are not prioritized. The response to the support tickets without an assigned priority is at the Company's discretion, and such tickets may be closed without explanation. The priority for a new support ticket is set after clarifying the issue criticality and may be changed by the Contractor if necessary.

Tickets requesting consulting services have no priority and are processed as per the approved work schedule. Before starting to work on these tickets, the work scope and schedule shall be agreed. The work is performed during business hours only.

Ticket Submission

A ticket is opened for each new issue. If multiple issues are described in the ticket, the technical support has the right to close it if any of the described issues are resolved.

To set a priority higher than P4 Low, the issue criticality shall be justified using business terms, since a technical problem does not inherently cause business-critical losses for the Customer.

The following information shall be provided when contacting the technical support:

• A detailed description of the issue as well as the expected solution

• The error message as is and in the text form

• Information as to where the error message appeared

• Information as to the time the problem was observed, the way it manifested itself, events that took place at the time or immediately prior to the problem occurrence: any possible DBMS configuration changes, upgrades of the software, server hardware, or network hardware, any failures, reloads, etс.

• Information whether the problem can be reproduced: always, occasionally, or one time

• Steps to reproduce the problem

• (*) DBMS name (PostgreSQL, 1C, Standard, Enterprise, Shardman, Certified) and its version

• (*) Whether the DBMS was installed from a repository (the name of the repository) or installed unassisted

• (*) OS name and version, CPU architecture

• (*) DBMS configuration files

• Log files of the DBMS and OS as of the moment when the problem occurred

• (*) Whether the DBMS operates in a cluster or participates in replication; which cluster software is used

• Whether the problem is critical, whether there are any critical dates

• If the Highest priority is requested, it must be justified and 24x7 contact details of the Customer must be provided (see below)

• Critical problems only:

  • Criticality justification in business terms

• Performance issues:

  • (*) Number of CPUs and RAM size

  • (*) Database size (including all tablespaces)

  • (*) The disk where database files are stored (including all tablespaces)

  • Whether there is a monitoring system that allows analyzing the events

Parameters marked with (*) may be gathered using the diagnostic script, which is provided by the technical support service.

In order to fix bugs in the supported software, it is necessary to provide the scenario for reproducing the issue using the Contractor's internal resources or give access to the Customer's environment where the issue can be reproduced. Otherwise, there is no guarantee that the issue will be resolved within the SLA timeframe.

The P1 Highest Priority Tickets

The following should also be done when opening the P1 Highest priority ticket:

• Explain why the problem is critical, specify the damages the Customer has suffered.

• Confirm readiness to work 24x7.

• Provide contact details (name and phone number) of the technical specialist who will work on the problem 24x7.

• Provide contact details (name and phone number) of the manager who will be responsible for organizing work on the problem 24x7.

• Call the technical support hotline after opening a new ticket or providing information on such tickets.

Escalation

Escalation means pointing the attention of the manager of the Company's relevant service to the problem in the specific ticket.

If the progress under a ticket does not meet the Customer's expectations, it is necessary to point the attention of a Contractor's manager to this problem. This process is called escalation. To escalate a problem, click the red Escalation button in the ticket and specify the reason for escalation. The stated reason will be considered, and the Contractor will propose the most appropriate action plan.

The reason for escalation, like the problem criticality, must be explained in terms of how it damages the business. This is because a considerable technical problem may leave the business unaffected, while a minor technical problem may have a substantial impact under certain circumstances. Here are the most typical escalation reasons: unsatisfactory ticket progress, new developments that change the problem scale, system commissioning or other milestones, involvement of the Customer management in the problem, etc.

The more specific the reason for escalation is, the more appropriate is the action that the Contractor takes.

The problem escalation does not necessarily mean that its priority is raised. However, it may be raised during the implementation of the proposed action plan.

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