New extensions to Red Hat certifications

Red Hat Training and Certification is extending the period for which many Red Hat certifications will be considered current. 

Why are we doing it?

Over the years we have made some policy changes to the Red Hat certification program.  We went from a release-based system of determining whether a certification is current to a calendar-based one when Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 was released in 2010.  We allowed some credentials to extend the period for which other credentials are current.  In 2014, Red Hat Certificates of Expertise began to have a “current until” date and all certifications leading to Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA) must be kept current in order to maintain one’s RHCA.

Because these last changes were significant, we did not apply them immediately.  Instead, we provided an extension of all affected certifications to October 1, 2017 -- three years past the date on which the new policies took effect.

Despite trying our level best to communicate these changes through various means, many people were not aware of the changes and did not begin taking action over the last three years.  Moreover, while extending older certifications for three years was the right thing to do, extending them all to a single date created a new challenge:  an RHCA that might have taken you several years to earn now had all supporting credentials going non-current on a single day, month and year.  This condition creates more urgency around that single date than we intended.  

Consequently, we have implemented a set of staggered extensions that give everyone with older certifications at least one more year, and sometimes more, to renew those certifications.

What are we doing?

We are extending the period for which most certifications are current.  There are some certifications we are not extending:

• Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA), Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE), and Red Hat Certified JBoss Developer (RHCJD) already had a three-year policy in 2014 when the new policies concerning Red Hat Certificates of Expertise and Red Hat Certified Architect were introduced
• Certifications introduced by Red Hat after October 1, 2014 are ineligible for extension because the three-year currency period was already in effect at the time these certifications were introduced

The extension for all eligible certifications is based on when the certification was first offered in the market, with the oldest credential receiving one additional year to October 1, 2018 and each subsequent credential getting a longer extension.  Taking a graduated approach to the extensions spreads the requirements out a little more for RHCAs who have at least five credentials to maintain.

Red Hat Certified Professionals who have earned credentials that are eligible for extension should use their certification ID on Certification Central to review the revised dates for their credentials.

The following table documents the extensions we have made:

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