RHCSA/RHCE 7 Study Advice Needed

gdsmit1

I've been using Linux for several years. I've been using the Debian derivatives at home for a long time. I work daily with RHEL6 servers. But I don't get to do deep and personal admin work, just work with installing/maintaining/troubleshooting applications on top of it. We are moving towards CENTOS7 due to cost of licensing so decided now is the time to get certified. It will have me in front of the curve at work.

The problem is there's not really much choice in books for RHEL7 exams. So I bought Michael Jang's RHCE6 book thinking that I would work through that and get the RHEL7 book once that came out. But that was before I knew how different RHEL7 is from RHEL6.

My hardware supports virtulization and I have this server set aside strictly for training purposes. I have CENTOS7 and Scientific Linux 7 downloaded and have been able to work through problems in the first and second chapters, but it's a very slow go getting up and running.

Anyone have any good sites or sources of info on the differences between RHEL6 7 RHEL7? As it stands now, I'll start working through an exercise and hit a hurdle. Then I spend 5 to 20 minutes figuring out how to get around the block. I know that the research is helping me learn, but I'd like to narrow my searches down to just a couple reputable sources.

Any other advice that anyone has to offer on studying to pass the exam the first time through, I'd love to hear it.

jdancer

I suggest you compare the exam objectives for RHEL 6 and RHEL 7. From what I understand, the RHEL 7 exam is twice as long as the RHEL 6 exam.

Yes, I agree RHEL 7 has a learning curve but that is what RHEL has standardized on. The only video instruction I can find for RHEL 7 is LiveLessons from Pearson. Supposely, this spring will be a few RHEL 7 books coming out. Check it out on Amazon.

brombulec

Check out the exam objectives for RHEL7 and use CentOS7 (not Scientific Linux). You can do all the tasks (registering and yum tasks are not in scope of the exam - you can use yum update on CentOS). using CentOS.
There is no need to look in the differences table - the basics of the linux are the same for Debian, RHEL, SuSE. But the RHEL7 has systemd, selinux, firewallcmd and others - ans this are the tasks that you have to master if you want to be RHCE on RHEL7.

gdsmit1

Thanks for the suggestions. I am using CENTOS and have only used Scientific Linux to create one of the VMs so far. I'm using the Michael Jang book to work through the objectives and as things are different, I'm researching to find out how to get around them.

One thing I have discovered is it's tough to look up stuff dealing with KVM. You end up with a lot of your hits being about keyboard/video/mouse switches. But if you use kernel-based virtual machine, it works better.

ally_uk

couple of red hat books are coming out later this year

http://www.amazon.com/RHCE-RHCSA-Cert-Guide-Certification/dp/0789754053

RHCSA/RHCE Red Hat Linux Certification Study Guide, Seventh Edition (Exams EX200 & EX300): Michael Jang, Alessandro Orsaria: 9780071841962: Amazon.com: Books

Verities

I like to point people to the sticky in the top of this forum: RHCE Resources Update

Dark put some effort into that and there's a lot of good RHEL 7 guides located in it.