Chapter 8. Certification workflow
Chapter 8. Certification workflow 8.1. Adding certifications to previously certified hardware Use this process to create a new certification request for a system or component that has already completed a hardware certification process for an earlier RHEL version, or for a system or component that is being certified at the moment. Procedure Log in to the Red Hat Certification portal . Click New Certification . Select the Red Hat product, version, and platform for certification. Then, click . Select vendor, make, and name of an already certified product from the dropdown lists. Then, click . After the request is created, monitor the request for questions from the review team as they create the official test plan. 8.2. Changing features or hardware in an existing certification Apply for a supplemental certification to add hardware or features to an existing certification. You can request a supplemental certification for features that were not previously certified, either because they were not tested or their tests failed. After the additional features are certified, Red Hat will add these features to the certification catalog. Procedure Log in to the Red Hat Certification portal . Click the existing hardware certification. Note You might need to adjust the look-back period in the pop-up menu beyond the default 90 days. Click the Related Certifications tab to view existing related certifications. Click Add Related Certification . In the dialog box, select Supplemental to create a new supplemental certification. Review the confirmation screen displaying certification details. If it is correct, click Create Case , otherwise, click Back to change the certification type. The new case will be created and opened. In the new case, provide details for the test plan by either: Attaching files with information of the components to be added. Adding a comment with information about the devices to be added. Run the certification tests. You do not need to wait for the new test plan. 8.3. Creating a system pass-through certificate using existing specification file A system pass-through certification creates a copy of a certified system and lists it under a different vendor name, a different make, or a different model. Pass-through is used when a vendor sells their system to a partner who then rebrands it, or if a vendor sells two or more systems where one system is a superset of another. Procedure Log in to the Red Hat Certification portal . Click the existing hardware certification. Click Related Certification . Click Add Related Certification , and select Pass-through . Choose the appropriate product: If the product has already been created, select it. If the product is not in the list, create it as a new product. Click New Certification to create the new pass-through certification. The Red Hat certification team will review the hardware specification and publish the new system .certification. After the new certification is published, partners can refer to it as a pass-through certification. 8.3.1. Copying an existing system certification to a new entry Procedure To create the Pass through certification, go to the Red Hat certification web user interface, click the existing hardware system certification that is certified. Click the Certification Section. In the, Related Certification tab, go to the Pass through Certification section and click the New Certification button. In the Vendor field select the Vendor whose product you need to pass-through. In the Make field select the make that you need to pass through. Click the Create button. This will generate a request to create a pass through system specification and a pass through certification for the generated specification. If the original system specifications and the pass-through system specifications are identical or have no differences, no additional testing will be required. If differences are found, the Red Hat certification team will discuss with you what should be done to account for them. 8.3.2. Creating a system pass-through certificate using existing specification file Procedure Go to the Red Hat certification web user interface, click the existing hardware system certification that is certified. Click the Certification Section. In the Related Certification tab, go to the Pass through Certification section and choose the pass through specification file that has been created. This will create the second pass-through certificate using the same specification entry. 8.4. Creating and publishing a component pass-through certification A component pass-through certification essentially creates a copy of a certified component, listing it under a different vendor name, a different make, or a different model. This type of pass-through is used when a system vendor wants to include a component that has already been certified by a component vendor, when a component vendor sells their components to a third party who rebrands them, or if a vendor sells two or more components where one system is a superset of the others. Procedure Create a system certification. See Opening a new certification case by using the Red Hat Certification portal . Select the Vendor , Make and Name . Click the New Product button. This will take you to Choose the Certification Program web page. Select the Vendor and Program as Hardware. Click the button. This will take you to Define the Red Hat Hardware Certification Vendor Product web page. Fill in all the relevant details. From the drop down list of Category , select the category as Component/Peripheral . This creates the Component certification. The Red Hat certification team certifies and publishes the newly created Component certification. After the certificate is certified and published, it becomes public for other partners to refer it as a pass through component. 8.4.1. Copying an existing component certification to a new entry Procedure To copy the Component certification, go to the Red Hat Certification web user interface, click the existing hardware system certification that is certified. Click the Certification section. In the Related Certification tab, go to the Pass through Certification section and click the New Certification button. In the Vendor field select the Component Vendor whose product you need to pass-through. In the Make field select the Component Make that you need to pass through. Note Here, the Component Vendor and the Component Make are the fields that gets generated while performing Steps 1 to 4 of Creating and Publishing a Component Certification. If the original component specifications and the pass-through component specifications are identical then, no additional testing will be required. If there are differences found, the Red Hat certification team will discuss with you what should be done to account for them. 8.5. Adding missing data to the product certification To ensure accurate and complete certification information, follow this streamlined process for adding missing attributes before publishing the certification. Procedure Log in to the Red Hat Certification portal . Click the existing hardware certification. In the Certification Status section, click the question mark icon. A Completion Requirements notification banner displays the information about the missing attributes. Click one of the missing attributes, and you will be redirected to the Properties tab of that certification. Optional: Click the product under the Partner Product section and navigate to the Properties tab. On the Properties tab, enter the missing details such as Detail Description , Short Description , Partner Product Logo or Product Logo , and System Types . Note The system type option is applicable only if you have selected the product category as System . From the System Types list select one or many system types. Add marketing URLs for different system types in the Enter url field. Click Update . Verification The question mark icon is no longer visible if all the required data is present or updated. After the certification is complete and published, the updated product data, along with the system types, will be available on the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog . Note All the fields marked with an asterisk * are required and must be completed before publishing the certification. 8.6. Certifying 64k kernel The 64k page size kernel is a useful option for large datasets on ARM platforms. It is suitable for memory-intensive workloads as it has significant gains in overall system performance, especially in large databases, HPC, and high network performance. From RHEL 9.2 onwards, ARM architecture uses the 64k page size kernel as optional and the 4k kernel as default. To certify the 64k page size kernel, you need to first complete RHEL 9 certification using the default 4k kernel and then you can conduct a second certification with the 64k kernel. After successful completion of the second certification, a Knowledgebase article will be attached to the 4k size kernel certification indicating support for the 64k page size with instructions on how to use the 64k kernel. Note You must create a supplemental certification to certify the 64k kernel. 8.7. Downloading guest images during test execution Procedure Verify if the guest images are available locally on the system. If yes, test execution will start. If the guest images are not available locally, the test will try downloading them from the pre-configured test server. If both local availability and the test server download fail, the test will establish a connection with the CWE API to obtain a pre-signed S3 URL for AWS. The guest image will then be downloaded from AWS by using the provided URL. If the download from AWS also encounters an issue, the test will use CWE API to directly stream and download the guest images. If all attempts to acquire the guest images are unsuccessful, the entire test is marked as FAIL. Note The above procedure is applicable for rhcert version 8.66 and later. If the FV image download fails during the test run, follow these steps: Download the files from the Red Hat Certification portal . After downloading the files, move them to /var/lib/libvirt/images directory on the host under test. To manually extract the files use the command tar xmvfj <tarred file name> . After the file is extracted, rename it by using the command mv <extracted file> <image file name> . For example - mv hwcertData-20211116.img hwcertData.img . Refer to the following table for the file names: Tarred file name Image file name hwcertData.img.tar.bz2 hwcertData.img hwcert-x86_64.img.tar.bz2 hwcert-x86_64.img rhel-kvm-rt-image.qcow2.tar.bz2 rhel-kvm-rt-image.qcow2