Services Provided

The Server Hardware Certification team provides the following services to our customers

Certification Review

We will review submissions from our Partners’ Self-Testing efforts. We will work with the partner to ensure all coverage areas are tested and all required tests are passed. This is the most common means for a Partner’s hardware to be tested and listed as Ubuntu Server Certified.

Certification Testing

While Self-Testing is by far the most common means of certifying servers under the programme, on occasion we will also provide one of the following services to the Partner. Each of the following, however, does come with different requirements and caveats and should be discussed thoroughly so that the you understand the limitations and potential costs involved.

In-House

We will, at the request of the client, perform certification testing in our lab in the Boston, MA, USA area on hardware sent from the partner to our Lab.

On-Site

We will, at the request of the client, travel to the partner facilities and perform certification at the partner facility. This service is not common and must be discussed as early as possible with the team.

Remote

We will, at the request of the client, perform testing remotely assuming that proper VPN-type access and admin control over the MAAS server, SUT, and any additional machines (such as iperf targets) is provided by the Partner. This service is not common and requires the OEM to perform a good bit of lab setup prior to our accessing the network and performing tests. This also requires fast, reliable internet access into the Partner Lab which not every lab can support.

Certificate Issuance and Publication

We will, upon completion of review, issue a certificate for the SUT and publish that certificate on our HCL (https://ubuntu.com/certified). We will not publish certificates that are created as part of a private engagement. We will not publish certificates for certification testing of hardware that has not yet been made Generally Available to the public. In those cases, we will reserve the certificate until such time as the Partner Server Model has been announced and the Partner has notified us that it’s OK to publish the certificate.

In addition to publishing basic information about Server Models that are certified, we will publish the test and support status of all Vendor Approved Options that are applicable to that Server Model.

Note, a failure to adequately test the list of Vendor Approved Options that apply to a Server Model could mean that issuing of a certificate will be delayed or denied until an acceptable amount of Options testing is performed.

Test Tool Development

We will develop and maintain the Suite for Ubuntu Server Certification testing scenarios. We will make the Suite available in a publicly facing repository along with any necessary dependency packages that are not available in the Ubuntu Main or Universe repositories.

All test scripts and tools will be completely open source software where possible. Proprietary tools are generally not acceptable for official Ubuntu Server Certification Testing. Any exceptions to this rule will be decided on a case by case basis by the Certification Team.

Test Tool Maintenance and Bug Fixing

We will investigate and resolve reported bugs in the Suite. We will maintain the Suite code to ensure it runs reliably on the two most recent Ubuntu LTS versions. We will not actively maintain or update the Suite code for anything older than the two most recent Ubuntu LTS versions.

Website Maintenance and Bug Fixes

We will work with the web team to resolve any bugs or issues discovered with the public or private web sites.