Puppet platform lifecycle

The Puppet platform is made up of several packages: puppet-agent, puppetserver, and, optionally, puppetdb. Understanding what versions are maintained and which versions go together is important when upgrading and troubleshooting.

Puppet releases and lifecycle

Puppet Core has two release tracks at levels 7 and 8.

Important: To ensure that you have the most recent features, fixes, and security patches, update your Puppet Core version whenever there is a new release.
The following table provides an overview of Puppet Core and open source Puppet packages and lists the maintained Puppet, Puppet Server, and PuppetDB versions, with links to their respective documentation.
Puppet version Puppet Server version PuppetDB version Associated PE version Projected EOL date
8.11.0 8.8.0 8.9.0 2025.x This version of Puppet Core will be superseded by the next V8 release.
8.10.0 8.7.0 8.8.0 2023.x This version of open source Puppet is EOL in February 2025.
7.35.0 7.17.4 7.21.0 2021.7.x This version of Puppet Core will be superseded by the next Puppet Core V8 release.
7.34.0 7.17.3 7.20.0 2021.7.x This version of open source Puppet is EOL in February 2025.
6.28.0 6.20.0 6.22 2019.8.x This version of open source Puppet reached EOL in February 2023.
Tip: To access documentation for unmaintained Puppet versions, see Archived documentation.

For information about Puppet's operating system support, see System requirements.

Puppet platform packages

The Puppet platform bundles the components required for a successful deployment. Open source Puppet is distributed in the following packages:

Package Contents
puppet-agent

This package contains Puppet’s main code and all of the dependencies needed to run it, including Facter, Hiera, the PXP agent, root certificates, and bundled versions of Ruby and OpenSSL. After the package is installed, you have everything you need to run the Puppet agent service and the puppet apply command.

puppetserver Puppet Server is a JVM-based application that, among other things, runs instances of the primary Puppet server application and serves catalogs to nodes running the agent service. It has its own version number and might be compatible with more than one Puppet version. This package depends on puppet-agent. After it’s installed, Puppet Server can serve catalogs to nodes running the agent service.
puppetdb PuppetDB (optional) collects data generated by Puppet. It enables additional features such as Exported resources, advanced queries, and reports about your infrastructure.
puppetdb-termini Plugins to connect your primary server to PuppetDB

The puppetserver component of the Puppet platform is available only for Linux. The puppet-agent component is available independently for over 30 platforms and architectures, including Windows and macOS.

Restriction: As of Puppet agent 5.5.4, MCollective was deprecated. It was removed in Puppet 6.0. If you use Puppet Enterprise, consider Puppet orchestrator. If you use open source Puppet, migrate MCollective agents and filters using tools such as Bolt and PuppetDB’s Puppet Query Language (PQL). For details, see the Reference guide.

puppet-agent component version numbers

Each puppet-agent package contains several components. This table shows the components shipped in this release track, and contains links to available component release notes. Agent release notes are included on the same page as Puppet release notes.

Tip: Hiera 5 is a backward-compatible evolution of Hiera, which is built into Puppet. To provide some backward-compatible features, Hiera 5 uses the classic Hiera 3 codebase. This means that Hiera is still shown as version 3.x in the following table, even though this Puppet version uses Hiera 5.
puppet-agent Puppet Facter Hiera Resource API Ruby OpenSSL
7.35 7.35.0 4.11.0 None 1.9.0 2.7.8 1.1.1w
7.34.0 7.34.0 4.10.0 3.12.0 1.9.0 2.7.8 1.1.1w
7.33.0 7.33.0 4.9.0 3.12.0 1.9.0 2.7.8 1.1.1w
7.32.1 7.32.1 4.8.0 3.12.0 1.9.0 2.7.8 1.1.1v
7.31.0 7.31.0 4.7.1 3.12.0 1.9.0 2.7.8 1.1.1v
7.30.0 7.30.0 4.7.0 3.12.0 1.9.0 2.7.8 1.1.1v
7.29.1 7.29.1 4.6.1 3.12.0 1.9.0 2.7.8 1.1.1v
7.29.0 7.29.0 4.6.0 3.12.0 1.9.0 2.7.8 1.1.1v
7.28.0 7.28.0 4.5.2 3.12.0 1.9.0 2.7.8 1.1.1v
7.27.0 7.27.0 4.5.1 3.12.0 1.9.0 2.7.8 1.1.1v
7.26.0 7.26.0 4.4.2 3.12.0 1.9.0 2.7.8 1.1.1v
7.25.0 7.25.0 4.4.1 3.12.0 1.8.16 2.7.7 1.1.1t
7.24.0 7.24.0 4.3.1 3.12.0 1.8.16 2.7.7 1.1.1t
7.23.0 7.23.0 4.3.0 3.11.0 1.8.16 2.7.7 1.1.1q
7.21.0 7.21.0 4.2.14 3.11.0 1.8.16 2.7.7 1.1.1q
7.20.0 7.20.0 4.2.13 3.10.0 1.8.16 2.7.6 1.1.1q
7.19.0 7.19.0 4.2.12 3.10.0 1.8.14 2.7.6 1.1.1q
7.18.0 7.18.0 4.2.11 3.10.0 1.8.14 2.7.6 1.1.1q
7.17.0 7.17.0 4.2.10 3.9.0 1.8.14 2.7.6 1.1.1n
7.16.0 7.16.0 4.2.8 3.8.1 1.8.14 2.7.6 1.1.1n
7.15.0 7.15.0 4.2.8 3.8.1 1.8.14 2.7.5 1.1.1l
7.14.0 7.14.0 4.2.7 3.8.0 1.8.14 2.7.5 1.1.1l
7.13.1 7.13.1 4.2.6 3.8.0 1.8.14 2.7.3 1.1.1l
7.12.0 7.12.0 4.2.5 3.7.0 1.8.14 2.7.3 1.1.1l
7.11.0 7.11.0 4.2.4 3.7.0 1.8.14 2.7.3 1.1.1l
7.10.0 7.10.0 4.2.3 3.7.0 1.8.14 2.7.3 1.1.1k
7.9.0 7.9.0 4.2.2 3.7.0 1.8.14 2.7.3 1.1.1k
7.8.0 7.8.0 4.2.1 3.7.0 1.8.14 2.7.3 1.1.1k
7.7.0 7.7.0 4.2.0 3.7.0 1.8.13 2.7.0 1.1.1i
7.6.1 7.6.1 4.1.1 3.6.0 1.8.13 2.7.0 1.1.1i
7.5.0 7.5.0 4.0.52 3.6.0 1.8.13 2.7.0 1.1.1i
7.4.1 7.4.1 4.0.51 3.6.0 1.8.13 2.7.0 1.1.1i
7.4.0 7.4.0 4.0.50 3.6.0 1.8.13 2.7.0 1.1.1i
7.3.0 7.3.0 4.0.49 3.6.0 1.8.13 2.7.0 1.1.1i
7.1.0 7.1.0 4.0.47 3.6.0 1.8.13 2.7.0 1.1.1i
7.0.0 7.0.0 4.0.46 3.6.0 1.8.13 2.7.0 1.1.1g

Server and agent compatibility

Use this table to verify that you're using a compatible version of the agent for your PE or Puppet Server.

Restriction: Puppet Server 6.x is no longer developed or tested.
Agent Server
Puppet 6.x

PE 2019.1 through 2019.8

 Puppet 7.x

PE 2021.0 through 2023.2

 Puppet 8.x

PE 2023.4 and later
6.x ✓ ✓ ✓
7.x ✓ ✓
8.x ✓