The Red Hat certification program is designed for engineers, enterprise developers, system administrators, application administrators, and architects. Virtualization and cloud administrators are also the target audience of these credentials. These are professionals who use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in their IT infrastructure. It is crucial to mention that Red Hat, Inc. offers open source software solutions to over 90% of Fortune 500 organizations, including healthcare companies, Internet Service Providers, commercial banks, and airlines. It also offers various professional certificates to the individuals based on its software products, such as virtualization, cloud based and storage solutions, and operating systems.

The aim of the Red Hat certifications is to ensure that the professionals working on its products have the skills and knowledge required to function optimally. To earn any of the certificates, the candidates are required to pass some performance-based tests. The exam questions are based on the completion of real world scenario tasks with Red Hat technologies. Before now, the students must go through a Red Hat training course in order to write the exam.

The professional with a Red Hat certification automatically becomes a Red Hat Certified Professional. There are various credentials offered by Red Hat but the most popular are basically three: Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA), Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA), and Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE). The biggest aspect of Red Hat certifications is aimed at system administrators, architects, and engineers.

The Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) is designed for experienced Red Hat administrators and it is a requirement to pursue the RHCE credential. To obtain RHCSA, one will be required to pass a 2.5-hour exam (EX200). Before writing the test, it is recommended that the students take three training courses in order to prepare for the exam. This certification is a requirement for some organizations in the US because it meets the US Department of Defense Directive 8570 standard.

The RHCE credential is intended for experienced senior system administrators. It also fulfills the requirements of the US Department of Defense Directive. To earn this credential, the candidates must first earn the RHCSA certificate and then go through a training based on their skill level before writing the certification exam. The relevant test is EX300.

The RHCA certificate is the highest level in the Red Hat certification program. To earn this, the candidate must have the RHCE or RHCJD (Red Hat Certified JBoss Developer) credentials. One also should take the required five or six exams, depending on their chosen concentration, to earn this Red Hat certification.