Hardware certification pre-assessment

Assessment questions

• Has Red Hat Enterprise Linux been successfully installed on the product?
• Does your hardware work without you adding anything extra?
• Is all hardware accounted for in your product model?
• Is there a complete specification of your product’s operation and functionality?
• Is your product production ready?

The certification assessment is a set of five questions intended to help future partners consider their readiness for hardware certification with Red Hat.

Answering “yes” or “no” to any one question does not prescribe whether you are ready to begin certification: this assessment helps partners determine their own readiness.

If you are able to confidently answer Yes to the entire assessment, you are likely ready to begin your hardware certification.

If you have concerns or need help with any question, please let us know and we can help you figure out next steps!

Our mutual customers trust that certified hardware will be supported for the entirety of the applicable Red Hat Enterprise Linux major version lifecycle(s). One way to ensure that supportability is to install the RHEL software itself on the hardware. Additionally, the Red Hat Certification tools run on RHEL so it is important that the software be installed and running to complete the certification process.

For more information, including the certification lifecycle, please click here.

Customers who pursue certified solutions expect that everything needed for the operation of the hardware is shipped and supported by Red Hat. If third-party drivers not shipped by Red Hat are required for the system or components to operate, we cannot certify that hardware.

The certification process does allow for the presence of third-party drivers used with optional hardware that are not required to be tested to complete the certification.

Please visit these links for information about certification prerequisites and driver policy.

Customers searching our ecosystem catalog expect that a certified hardware entry is the entirety of that system or component, with no additional hardware needed for operation and support. Because of that, Red Hat only certifies whole models, not configurations. All hardware must be accounted for in the product submitted for certification.

Please visit these links for information about certification prerequisites and model policy.

Customers purchase hardware for certain characteristics (network performance, filesystem size, etc). Thus, Red Hat requires specifications of product behavior to create applicable certification test plans for certification. This ensures customers will receive the expected operation and functionality for systems or components, as appropriate.

Please visit these links for information about certification prerequisites and specifications.

Just as customers expect production-ready hardware at the time of purchase, so too does Red Hat certify production-level hardware only. Red Hat certifies the model which will be sold in production, and certified models may not be altered such that a regression in the certification testing results or change in criteria occurs.

Please visit these links for information about certification prerequisites and production readiness.