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Finally going the cert route... Advice?
RHEL
Member Posts: 195 ■■■□□□□□□□
Hey all. I'm starting to seriously think about pursuing some certifications for the first time in my post-college career, and was hoping for some advice.
To give some background, I've been a UNIX/Linux engineer over three different companies over 6 years, growing in responsibility and am now seen a senior level engineer for a mid-sized company -- 6,000 employees & $100M IT budget -- and manage about 500 AIX servers, 30 RHEL, 20 Solaris.
None of my employers have ever really cared a whole lot about certifications; however, I did pick up a couple my first two years on the job out of school just from trying to kill time and because all exams/education were 100% reimbursed. I ended up grabbing CompTIA Linux+, LPI LPIC-1, Novell CLA, a 4-course UNIX certificate from University of Illinois, and also did a full-time masters degree in CIS.
After that two year period, I have not really pursued anything else except going to annual IBM AIX training courses.
That being said, I've now really started to think about what's next in my career. I really feel that a couple Linux and Security certs would be a killer combo with my background and could help propel me to my next steps.
However, the problem is that my current employers doesn't see the value in paying for a RHCSA/RHCE bootcamp as our Linux footprint is so small compared to AIX. I might be able to convince them to pay for the exams, but preparation is going to be on me alone.
Here's what I was thinking over the next year or so:
- RHCSA (I have Jang's book and am pretty well versed on Red Hat, though a little rusty)
- RHCE - I'll need to lab and study a good amount. I can probably work out something w/ my employer to allow me to set up 'test' VMs in our enterprise environment for this purpose.
- A respectable security cert. Perhaps CISSP and/or CEH? I need some advice on this one. I'm very good at the investigative route (ie, log analysis) and server hardening.
I'm hoping to migrate toward a security focused role that is heavily dependent on an expert level UNIX/Linux background. Does such a thing exist? I'd even consider a consulting role. Would the certs above position me well for this? Which security cert would be best for me?
Thanks much in advance... Any advice would be helpful as I'm really just in the planning/brainstorming phase.
To give some background, I've been a UNIX/Linux engineer over three different companies over 6 years, growing in responsibility and am now seen a senior level engineer for a mid-sized company -- 6,000 employees & $100M IT budget -- and manage about 500 AIX servers, 30 RHEL, 20 Solaris.
None of my employers have ever really cared a whole lot about certifications; however, I did pick up a couple my first two years on the job out of school just from trying to kill time and because all exams/education were 100% reimbursed. I ended up grabbing CompTIA Linux+, LPI LPIC-1, Novell CLA, a 4-course UNIX certificate from University of Illinois, and also did a full-time masters degree in CIS.
After that two year period, I have not really pursued anything else except going to annual IBM AIX training courses.
That being said, I've now really started to think about what's next in my career. I really feel that a couple Linux and Security certs would be a killer combo with my background and could help propel me to my next steps.
However, the problem is that my current employers doesn't see the value in paying for a RHCSA/RHCE bootcamp as our Linux footprint is so small compared to AIX. I might be able to convince them to pay for the exams, but preparation is going to be on me alone.
Here's what I was thinking over the next year or so:
- RHCSA (I have Jang's book and am pretty well versed on Red Hat, though a little rusty)
- RHCE - I'll need to lab and study a good amount. I can probably work out something w/ my employer to allow me to set up 'test' VMs in our enterprise environment for this purpose.
- A respectable security cert. Perhaps CISSP and/or CEH? I need some advice on this one. I'm very good at the investigative route (ie, log analysis) and server hardening.
I'm hoping to migrate toward a security focused role that is heavily dependent on an expert level UNIX/Linux background. Does such a thing exist? I'd even consider a consulting role. Would the certs above position me well for this? Which security cert would be best for me?
Thanks much in advance... Any advice would be helpful as I'm really just in the planning/brainstorming phase.