Chapter 2. Prerequisites

2.1. Program Membership, Accounts, and Entitlements

Red Hat requires a relationship agreement that is specific to the type of certification being performed before we can accept certification requests. This relationship can be documented in a section or subsection of an OEM or other partnership agreement, or it can be established by an independent certification agreement. The creation of an OEM or other partnership agreement is not covered here, as that is something handled by other groups. Talk with your assigned Red Hat representative if you want to know more about partnerships beyond hardware certification. If you would like to establish an independent hardware certification agreement, you can do so using the following steps:⁠

  1. Purchase membership in the Red Hat Certification Program.

    Email your sales contact and ask to purchase membership in the program. If you do not have a sales contact at Red Hat, email your technical account manager, partner manager, or send an email to cert-ops@redhat.com for assistance purchasing program membership. Please provide the following information:

    1. Text indicating that you wish to purchase membership in the Red Hat Hardware Certification Program
    2. Contact information for the person who will be placing the order
    3. Your company’s legal name

    4. Billing address (Please do not include credit card information.)

      A Red Hat sales representative will contact you to complete the purchasing process, which includes the creation of an account on the [Red Hat Customer Portal]https://access.redhat.com).

  2. Create a Red Hat Customer Portal account and login.

    1. Navigate to Red Hat Customer Portal.

    2. Select Register in the menu and follow the instructions.

      Make sure that you create a company account and not a personal account. The account created during this step is also used to sign in to the Red Hat Hardware Catalog when working with certification requests.

      Note

      The certification test suite uses Red Hat Customer Portal single sign-on (SSO) credentials to log in to the Red Hat Certification site and the Red Hat Certification test suite. If you already have a Customer Portal login skip this step. If you do not have a login but your company has logins on the Portal, please ask your company’s organization administrator to create a login for you under the company’s account.

Note

A Red Hat Customer Portal organization administrator in your organization will have the permissions to create an SSO account for your organization. If you are not familiar with the Red Hat Customer Portal organization administrator for your organization, try contacting your engineering account manager or engineering partner manager for assistance.

  1. Obtain required Red Hat Certification Catalog permissions.

    1. File a support request to have certification creation permissions added to your Red Hat Customer Portal login.

      If you have an assigned technical account manager (TAM) or engineering partner manager (EPM), file a request through Red Hat Bugzilla at http://bugzilla.redhat.com.

      If you do not have a TAM, file a request through Red Hat’s Customer Portal at https://access.redhat.com. Include your Red Hat Customer Portal account user name in the request.

      After this request has been approved and you log in to the Red Hat certification(rh-cert) web user interface, the Create link will appear in the rh-cert menu. This allows you to create a new certification request.

Note

It is mandatory to obtain Red Hat Certification permissions on your Red Hat Customer Portal account before it can be used for certification purposes.

2.2. Important Product Requirements

Hardware certification must be performed using drivers provided by Red Hat. Any hardware requiring third-party drivers for enablement is not eligible for certification.