Nope it should work in theory, are you using PuppetDB for this? If so
in the puppetdb.log you should see a corresponding log entry for the
deactivate command for that node. Can you grep against your
puppetdb.log to see if this arrives when you send the `puppet node
deactivate {foo}` command.
Also check to make sure no new commands have come in for that node, it
will tell you in the log if this has happened. We reactivate a node on
any new data, so this is worth checking.
After deactivation you should be able to query the node data with
something like:
curl '
http://localhost:8080/v3/nodes/node_name'
And you should see a date next to 'deactivated' that indicates when it
was deactivated. If its deactivated then it should not collect.
Finally, try using a tool like this to analyze what exports still exist:
https://forge.puppetlabs.com/zack/exports
This will help you understand if the node you are trying to deactivate
is still exporting this data, or if its coming from another place.
This is important, sometimes there is data coming from another node,
and its often what users don't expect. Make sure you check for typos
on the node name most importantly, this is the biggest contributing
factor to confusion around this :-).
ken.