01
Emergency Incident Response
A production ETL job that finance, reporting, or downstream systems depend on stops running. A senior engineer joins a live bridge within 15 minutes with access to diagnose — not a ticket acknowledgement.
Pentaho Support
24/7 Pentaho Support with a 15-Minute Emergency SLA
Last reviewed by Scott Sternloff
AceMQ keeps Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle) and Pentaho Server running in production — driver mismatches after infrastructure patches, repository lock contention, and jobs that silently stop firing after an upgrade. We also help teams that are honestly ready to move off Pentaho plan that migration properly.
Support quotes answered within 1 hour, by a senior engineer.
- min emergency SLA
- 15
- across Americas, EMEA, APAC
- 24/7
- enterprise customers
- 160+
- countries served
- 26+
Planning a build, upgrade or migration instead? See AceMQ Pentaho consulting and services.
Customers
Partners
Incident Triage
Pentaho problems we fix every week
These are real symptoms from real Pentaho production environments — and the first thing our engineers check when one comes in.
| Symptom you're seeing | What we check first | Typical resolution |
|---|---|---|
| A transformation that ran fine for years suddenly fails on one step | JDBC driver version and JVM version against what the transformation was originally built and certified against. An OS patch or Java upgrade on the host is the most common trigger for a step that had never touched in years. | 1–3 hours |
| Pentaho Server won't start or repository operations hang | Repository database lock state and connection pool exhaustion. A crashed job that didn't release its repository lock cleanly is the usual cause, not corruption — though we check for actual repository corruption if the lock clears and the problem persists. | 2–4 hours |
| Scheduled jobs stopped firing after a Pentaho upgrade, no error logged | Quartz scheduler configuration and job trigger definitions in the repository. Upgrades frequently reset or silently break Quartz cron expressions and trigger associations without surfacing an error anywhere visible. | 1–2 hours |
| Large transformation runs out of memory or slows to a crawl | Carte/PDI engine JVM heap allocation against actual row volume and step complexity, plus whether the transformation is doing in-memory sorts or lookups that should be pushed to the database instead. | 1–3 hours |
| Job succeeds but downstream data is missing or duplicated | Step-level error handling configuration and whether a step is set to continue on error rather than fail the job. Silent row drops from misconfigured error handling are a frequent Kettle gotcha. | Under 2 hours |
| License or support renewal lapsed and we're stuck on an old version | Current version against Pentaho's published end-of-life timeline, and whether known CVEs or bugs in your version have workarounds we can apply without an upgrade. | Same day |
| Clustered Carte servers get out of sync on job execution | Slave server configuration and load balancing setup in the job entry. Misconfigured slave server definitions cause jobs to execute against a stale or unreachable Carte instance. | 2–4 hours |
Resolution times reflect typical Pentaho engagements under an active AceMQ support contract. Every P1 closes with a written root-cause analysis.
What's Included
Everything in your Pentaho support contract
No add-on pricing for incidents. No per-ticket charges. One contract covers the whole surface.
- 02
Root Cause Analysis
Every P1 closes with a written RCA: what failed, why, the fix applied, and the specific driver, config, or scheduler change that prevents recurrence.
- 03
Performance Tuning
Carte and PDI engine memory tuning, step-level optimization to push work into the database instead of the transformation engine, and job orchestration cleanup for large batch runs.
- 04
Legacy Version Maintenance
Support for end-of-life Pentaho versions still running in regulated or change-controlled environments, including workarounds for known bugs with no official patch available.
- 05
Migration Planning & Execution
Honest assessment of whether to keep, upgrade, or replace a Pentaho deployment — and execution of a migration to Airbyte or a modern ELT stack when that's genuinely the better path.
- 06
Repository & Scheduler Health Reviews
Quarterly checks on repository integrity, Quartz scheduler configuration, and job/transformation inventory so upgrade risk and technical debt don't compound silently.
Why AceMQ
What you get that you don't get elsewhere
Named Engineers, Zero Cold Start
The same senior engineers stay on your account. They know your transformation inventory, your repository structure, and where the fragile jobs are — so a P1 starts with diagnosis, not an environment walkthrough.
No Tier-1 Triage Layer
You reach a senior Pentaho engineer directly by phone, email, or Slack. No help desk collecting information to pass along, no approval process between you and someone who can fix it.
We Still Know Kettle Deeply
Most consultancies have moved on from Pentaho entirely. Our engineers still work in PDI transformations regularly, which matters when the fix requires actually understanding step-level behavior, not just restarting a service.
Genuine Follow-the-Sun Coverage
Engineers across 26+ countries and every time zone. Your overnight batch failure is someone's mid-afternoon — no waiting for a region to wake up.
Honest About Maintain vs. Migrate
We will tell you plainly when a Pentaho deployment is stable and cheap to keep running, and when the maintenance burden or end-of-life risk means migration is the better financial decision. Neither answer earns us more retainer revenue than the other.
Full-Stack, Not Just the ETL Tool
Pentaho problems are frequently JDBC driver, JVM, OS patch, or database-side problems wearing a Pentaho error message. We diagnose across the whole stack because that's where root causes usually live.
We support Pentaho wherever it's deployed
Cloud, Kubernetes, bare metal, hybrid, and air-gapped — including environments where you can't give us outbound network access.
- Pentaho Server (on-premise)
- Pentaho Data Integration / Kettle
- AWS EC2 & self-managed cloud
- VMware vSphere
- Bare metal & on-premise data centers
- Clustered Carte deployments
- Air-gapped / no outbound access
- Legacy end-of-life versions (7.x, 8.x)
- Hybrid on-prem to cloud warehouse
- Regulated / change-controlled environments
Escalation Path
Your first hour of a Pentaho outage
Every tier reaches a senior Pentaho engineer. There is no tier-1 triage layer to get through.
- 15 minfirst responseEmergencyProduction down, messages not flowing, queue manager failure
- 1 hourfirst responseCriticalSevere degradation, high error rates, approaching capacity
- 4 hoursfirst responseHighPerformance issues, configuration problems, non-critical failures
- Next Dayfirst responseStandardQuestions, guidance, best practices, non-urgent improvements
P1 escalation path
A replay of one P1, from the first page to the written root-cause analysis
T+Elapsed15:00
15-minute P1 response, 24/7.
A response time, not a resolution time.
- T+00:00Paged
P1 opened, on-call engineer paged
Phone, email or Slack reaches the on-call senior engineer directly, whether the incident is in RabbitMQ, Kafka, Redis, PostgreSQL or Kubernetes. No web form, no tier-1 queue.
- T+15:00Live
Senior engineer on your bridge
A senior engineer who already knows your environment joins a live bridge, so nobody has to re-explain your topology.
- T+30:00If needed
Specialists across the stack join
When an incident crosses components, the engineers who know each one join. For RabbitMQ, the path runs to the core team.
- AfterEvery P1
Written root-cause analysis
Root cause, the fix applied and the prevention steps, delivered after every P1.
Pricing
What does AceMQ Pentaho support cost?
AceMQ Pentaho support contracts typically run $24,000–72,000 a year, depending on SLA level, scope (number of clusters or nodes, and environments) and deployment (self-managed, cloud-managed or Kubernetes).
| What moves the price | How it changes the contract |
|---|---|
| SLA level | Business-hours cover costs less than 24/7 cover with a 15-minute emergency response. |
| Scope | More clusters or nodes, and more environments, make a larger contract. |
| Deployment | Self-managed, cloud-managed and Kubernetes estates need different amounts of hands-on work. |
Covering several technologies under one contract, for example RabbitMQ, Kafka and Redis, earns an aggressive discount.
Support In Practice
Pentaho problems we've already solved
Pentaho support and migration work from AceMQ. Each card links to the full write-up: the batch estate, what AceMQ diagnosed or changed, and the result.
Pentaho Lineage and Documentation Recovery Assessment
Utility Holding Company
Reconstructing lineage and documentation for an undocumented estate of legacy Kettle transformations before anyone attempts to change or replace them.
Pentaho
PostgreSQLSQL Server
dbtPentaho Job Failure and Data Integrity Support
Logistics and Distribution Company
Ongoing support for a Pentaho Data Integration estate that must keep running reliably while a longer-term replacement is planned.
PentahoSQL ServerPostgreSQL
DockerPentaho Carte Cluster Stability Remediation
Industrial Products Manufacturer
Resolving Carte slave server instability where long-running clustered transformations hung, leaked memory, and left orphaned carte sessions.
PentahoPostgreSQLDocker
KubernetesPentaho to Modern ELT Stack Migration
Healthcare Payer Organization
Planning and executing a staged move off Pentaho Data Integration onto a modern ELT stack, without a big-bang cutover of hundreds of transformations.
Pentaho
AirbytedbtPostgreSQLKubernetes
Support options
Four tiers of Pentaho support.
AceMQ offers Pentaho support in four tiers, each handing more of the day-to-day work to AceMQ: 24/7 support and incident management for batch estates your team runs, proactive monitoring that finds fragile jobs and repository problems first, managed Pentaho on your own infrastructure, and fully managed Pentaho on AceMQ infrastructure. Current versions, 9.x and legacy 8.x and 7.x are covered in all four.
- Tier 1
Pentaho 24/7 Support & Incident Management
You run it, we back you up
- 24/7 live bridge with a named senior engineer
- Step, JDBC driver and Java runtime diagnosis
- Backfill of a missed run without duplicate loads
Best for: ETL teams that run Pentaho themselves and need senior cover when a nightly load fails.
- Tier 2
Pentaho 24/7 Support with Proactive Monitoring
You run it, we watch it with you
- Job and transformation inventory, with dead jobs flagged
- Scheduler and repository integrity checks
- Java runtime, JDBC driver and security notice tracking
Best for: Teams that want the missed batch window found in a review, not in a morning report.
- Tier 3
Managed Pentaho on Your Infrastructure
We run it in your cloud or data centre
- Pentaho Server and Carte monitoring with alerts to a person
- Repository backup and restore tests
- Servers rebuildable from version control
Best for: Regulated and change-controlled estates that cannot move their batch processing off site.
- Tier 4
Fully Managed Pentaho on AceMQ Infrastructure
We host it and run it, as a service
- AceMQ-run Pentaho Server and Carte
- Repository backups and restore tests
- Job failure alerting to your team
Best for: Teams that want to stop nursing servers while they decide what comes after Pentaho.
| Who does what | Tier 1 24/7 support | Tier 2 Proactive monitoring | Tier 3 Managed, your infrastructure | Tier 4 Fully managed by AceMQ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who runs Pentaho day to day? | Your team | Your team, with AceMQ reviews | AceMQ | AceMQ |
| Where does it run? | Your infrastructure | Your infrastructure | Your cloud account or data centre | AceMQ infrastructure |
| 24/7 incident response | 15-minute P1 response | 15-minute P1 response | 15-minute P1 response | 15-minute P1 response |
| Health checks and CVE alerts | On request | Scheduled | Included | Included |
| Patching and upgrades | Your team, AceMQ advises | Planned with AceMQ | Done by AceMQ | Done by AceMQ |
| Monitoring and on-call | Your team | Your team | AceMQ | AceMQ |
| Data, keys and accounts | Yours | Yours | Yours | Your data, hosted by AceMQ |
Every Tier can start as an ad hoc engagement or an annual partnership, and you can move up or down a Tier as your team changes.
One partner for Pentaho
Everything else AceMQ does for Pentaho.
Support is one part of what AceMQ does for Pentaho. The same engineers deliver consulting, health checks, migrations and end-of-life cover, and support the systems that usually run next to it.
- ConsultingPentaho consulting and services
- LifecycleEnd-of-life software support
- Enterprise supportOpen source support across your whole stack
- GuidePentaho guide
Support for the rest of your stack
Messaging & Streaming
- RabbitMQ supportMessaging & Streaming
- Apache Kafka supportMessaging & Streaming
- IBM MQ supportMessaging & Streaming
- ActiveMQ supportMessaging & Streaming
- Azure Service Bus supportMessaging & Streaming
- Amazon SQS supportMessaging & Streaming
- Google Cloud Pub/Sub supportMessaging & Streaming
- Redpanda supportMessaging & Streaming
- Apache Pulsar supportMessaging & Streaming
- Message Queuing supportMessaging & Streaming
Databases & Caching
Search & Analytics
Lakehouse & Compute
Observability & Monitoring
Data Integration
Cloud & Containers
API Management
See support for all 51 technologiesShow fewer
Related services
What does AceMQ Pentaho support include?
Our Pentaho support covers 24/7 emergency incident response with a 15-minute SLA, root cause analysis on every P1, performance tuning, legacy version maintenance, repository and scheduler health reviews, and migration planning when that's the right call. Every ticket is handled by a named senior engineer — there is no tier-1 triage layer and no per-incident charge.
Do you support end-of-life Pentaho versions?
Yes, and this is a significant share of our Pentaho support work. Many Pentaho deployments run in regulated or change-controlled environments that cannot upgrade on the vendor's timeline. We support these versions with bug workarounds and configuration-level mitigations where official patches no longer exist.
We're on Pentaho and considering migrating to something newer. Can you help decide?
Yes, and we'll give you an honest answer rather than a sales pitch. We assess whether your current Pentaho jobs are stable enough to leave alone, whether an upgrade solves the actual problem, or whether migrating to Airbyte or a modern ELT stack is worth the cost. If we plan and execute the migration, we map every Kettle transformation to its replacement rather than treating it as a rebuild from scratch.
How fast do you respond to a Pentaho production outage?
P1 emergencies — a production ETL job that downstream systems depend on is down — get a 15-minute first response with a senior engineer joining a live bridge. P2 critical issues are 1 hour, P3 high-priority 4 hours, and P4 standard questions next business day. These are contractual, not best-effort targets.
Can you fix a transformation that broke after an OS or Java patch, with no Pentaho version change?
Yes — this is one of the most common Pentaho incidents we see. A JDBC driver or Java runtime patch applied at the infrastructure level, with no change to Pentaho itself, breaks a step that had run unmodified for years. We diagnose the driver/JVM compatibility issue directly rather than assuming the transformation is at fault.
Do you still have engineers who genuinely know Kettle/PDI?
Yes. Unlike many consultancies that have fully moved on to newer ELT tools, we maintain active Pentaho and Kettle expertise because a meaningful number of regulated enterprise customers still run it in production and need it kept running correctly.
Can we work with AceMQ on Pentaho without a long contract?
Yes. AceMQ works on Pentaho in two ways: ad hoc engagements for a defined piece of work, such as a health check, an upgrade or an incident, or an annual partner engagement that covers 24/7 support, proactive reviews and named engineers. Many teams start ad hoc and move to an annual partnership once the first engagement is done.
How much does AceMQ Pentaho support or consulting cost?
Every AceMQ proposal is tailored to your requirements: your Pentaho environment, the SLA you need, the hours of cover and the scope of work. Most contracts run $24,000–72,000 a year, depending on the SLA, the scope and how Pentaho is deployed, with aggressive discounts when several technologies share one contract. Request a quote and AceMQ replies within 1 hour.
Let's talk
Your Pentaho Jobs Shouldn't Depend on Nobody Touching Them
Reactive cover, proactive reviews, or AceMQ running Pentaho for you on your infrastructure or ours. A senior engineer scopes it with you, and quote requests are answered within 1 hour.
A senior Pentaho engineer, not a sales queueQuote requests answered within 1 hourAd hoc engagements or an annual partnership
Production incident right now?Email a Pentaho Architect
Get in Touch
Talk to a Pentaho Expert
Send us a message and we'll follow up within 1 hour — or book a free 30-min consultation directly.
305-204-2607info@acemq.com66 W. Flagler St. 9th Floor
Miami, FL 33130
Miami, FL 33130
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