Rhce

NightShade03

Does anyone know if there is a way to take the RHCE/RHCT exams without taking a training course?! Everything on their site seems to suggest that I need to take one of their training modules in order to sit for the exam...I'd prefer self study....

undomiel

Unless they changed the rules recently no training course necessary.

Therhino

Completely possible.

You actually will take the test with people who just finished the class.(how ours was anyways) but I believe you have to go to a specific redhat location

Solaris_UNIX

IMO the best resource to use to study for the RHCE (without taking a second mortgage out on your home for the over-priced and unnecessary "class" from Red Hat) is this book by Michael Jang:

Amazon.com: RHCE Red Hat Certified Engineer Linux Study Guide (Exam RH302) (Certification Press) (978007226454: Michael Jang: Books

Mr. Jang is usually pretty good at keeping the book up to date (make sure you get at least the 5th edition or later) and it has quite a large number of lab exercises in it that you can work through with two computers that have CentOS installed on them that are plugged in to an ethernet switch. If you work through all the labs the way Michael Jang tells you to in the book, and you get at least one year of hands on experience using CentOS or Red Hat Linux in production (you can build your own web server and co-locate it in a datacenter for ~ $80 a month) then you should definitely be able to pass the RHCT and you might do surprisingly well on the RHCE as well! A friend of mine didn't prepare properly and failed the RHCE exam but they still gave him the RHCT as a consolation prize, and the RHCT got him a pretty decent job, so even failing the RHCE can lead to a "happy ending" of sorts. Also, if you don't have spare computers lying around to us as dedicated Linux boxen, you might be able to install CentOS into a virtual machine using Virtual Box, and practice running a "virtual" server on it that way.

You can download a free version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux called "CentOS" (for "Community Enterprise Operating System") here:

www.centos.org

and you can download VirtualBox here:

VirtualBox

and you can use it as a free and open-source operating system virtualization tool that will run well on most popular operating systems (Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, etc.)

CentOS is basically the Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code built into an operating system that's exactly like Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Oracle Unbreakable Linux with the major differences being that CentOS doesn't have the trade marked Red Hat logos in it (i.e. there are no pictures of "red hats" anywhere in the OS) and you can get the full version of CentOS free of charge and you also don't have to register with RHN to do "yum updates".

Keep in mind that you have to actually know Red Hat's version of Linux to pass the exam. Getting a "brain ****" from someone or going to a "boot camp" won't help you IMO as this is a hands on lab exam like the CCIE. There's no substitute for actual hands on experience working with a real CentOS or Red Hat Linux server in a home lab environment.

NightShade03

Thanks for the advice everyone. I have a CentOS server running at the moment in a lab environment. Just curious but is Fedora not suppose to be a RHEL replica as well as CentOS?

dynamik

Fedora is a RedHat-based distro that's designed to be a more user-friendly OS, like Ubuntu. There's obviously a great deal of overlap, but it's not nearly identical like CentOS is. I'd stick with CentOS for your RHCE studies.

Solaris_UNIX

NightShade03 wrote: »

Thanks for the advice everyone. I have a CentOS server running at the moment in a lab environment. Just curious but is Fedora not suppose to be a RHEL replica as well as CentOS?

Nope. Fedora IS NOT as good of an RHEL replica as CentOS or Oracle Unbreakable Linux is.

I use Fedora all the time as a desktop OS and it's a totally different animal from RHEL / Oracle Unbreakable Linux / CentOS (all three of those are basically different builds of the same source code). Fedora, for example, had this "Network Manager" thing that came in to the distro when Fedora 10 (or maybe Fedora 9?) first came out that makes the networking configuration totally different from Red Hat Enterprise Linux / CentOS. A big part of the RHCE is troubleshooting broken network configurations, so if you were learning how to do it on Fedora, you might base all your troubleshooting methods on this annoying new "Network Manager" autoconfiguration daemon thing that is unique to newer Fedora builds and totally screw the pooch on the real RHCE exam.

CentOS is the best option for a home study lab, but it does have security issues when you use it in a production environment where it's un-firewalled and directly facing the internet. The problem I've had with clients who use CentOS in production (and I have a lot of them) is that when there's a security patch for RHEL, Red Hat gives the patch / update to their paying customers very quickly. Then you have to wait a few months for Red Hat to "open source" the patch and then you have to wait even more time after that for the unpaid volunteers in the CentOS community to incorporate the patch into a new binary build that you can "yum update" in to. All this time, you can be basically waiting for months for the patch and you know your server is vulnerable and all the crackers / script kiddies know your server is vulnerable, but there's nothing you can do about it because you're waiting for the slow RHEL --> CentOS indirect patching process to run it's course. Of course this kind of thing has no bearing on an RHCE home study lab, but it is something to keep in mind if you're ever using unsupported CentOS in a production environment where the servers are directly facing the public internet.

All, in all, the CentOS patching issue is not a big concern for me because my servers are running things like OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Ubuntu Server and Solaris, but, unfortunately, it is a big concern for my clients, a majority of whom run CentOS because they're too cheap to pay the money for RHEL or Oracle Unbreakable Linux.

Shame on them

If they wanted a "free server OS" that comes with fast up-to-date security patches and support, they should have used Ubuntu Server because it has Mark Shuttleworth and his billions of dollars funding the patches out of his own pocket as a philanthropical / charitable foundation. Use Ubuntu Server and you won't have any problems that can't be resolved quickly by the "free tech support" on the Ubuntu forums is what I always tell them, but unfortunately they never listen.

NightShade03

Solaris_UNIX wrote: »

All this time, you can be basically waiting for months for the patch and you know your server is vulnerable and all the crackers / script kiddies know your server is vulnerable, but there's nothing you can do about it because you're waiting for the slow RHEL --> CentOS indirect patching process to run it's course.

Then why use CentOS at all in a production environment?! Honestly I'm an Ubuntu fan and use the server edition for all my stuff, however it seems that the RHCE is what holds as the standard for the business. Obviously there are the LPIs (with Ubuntu in their track as well) but from everything I've read most people say they are less well known. If going for the RHCE is it worth it to practice on CentOs but then preach RHEL for production, reguardless that it costs money?

- Total side note but I wish they had a RHCE for the Ubuntu distro.

Solaris_UNIX

NightShade03 wrote: »

Then why use CentOS at all in a production environment?! Honestly I'm an Ubuntu fan and use the server edition for all my stuff, however it seems that the RHCE is what holds as the standard for the business.

Look, people are stupid, ok? The RHCE IS the most prestigious Linux certification. You are 100% correct about that part and that is why you NEED to get an RHCE.

You're also correct that Ubuntu server is much easier to sysadmin than RHEL is because it's based on Debian and you can just use the "dpkg-reconfigure" command (i.e. "sudo dpkg-reconfigure postfix" or whatever) to configure everything through the ncurses interface menus instead of editing flat text files with vi. Ubuntu server with "apt-get install" or "aptitude install" and "dpkg-reconfigure" is really so easy that it's fool proof even with an unexperienced, non-Linux (think "clueless penguin hating, anti-Linux Microsoft-only IT guy") sysadmin running the box purely through an SSH command line with no X-windows installed (just teach the Microsoft IT guy to do ssh, aptitude install, and dpkg-reconfigure, and he can take it fine from there).

This is why you need to get an RHCE and then use the prestige that the RHCE bestows upon you to sell the idea of Ubuntu server to the red hat enamored corporate executive managers in suits and thus push Ubuntu server into the enterprise data centers where it belongs.

To be honest, if people had a clue, they would be running one of the newer builds of Solaris on their servers instead of RHEL anyway. RHEL doesn't have anything that can even remotely compare to things like Zones, crossbow, mdb, smf, dtrace, ZFS, dynamically reconfigurable kernel, etc. etc. on Solaris. The new "fire engine" network stack that came out in more recent builds of Solaris is outrageous and will fully saturate a 10 gigabit link at almost wire speed without even breaking a sweat while giving you zones / crossbow based Qos features that you can't get in any other operating system. But yet Red Hat is still somehow more "cool" than Solaris is.... strange isn't it?

So as you can see, it's not about what's a "better" or "more effective" technology, it's all about what the corporate executives in suits and senior IT managers think is "cool" at a particular point in time. It's like high school popularity contests all over again. You can show up on the first day of school and say that you're an RHCE and that you're best friends with "Red Hat", the coolest kid in school, and then the other kids will be more willing to listen to your suggestion to sneak in an Ubuntu server in there somewhere in the data center.

NightShade03

Haha fair point about the "suits". I want to get the RHCE just because like you said it is prestigious and people might tend to listen better just knowing that I have it. I do prefer Ubuntu to RHEL only because I feel it is easier to admin (as you pointed out) but I think its also more stable for setting up and securing things. I don't have much experience with Solaris but from what I hear everyone seems to like it although I guess I need to use it more to have a better understanding. I'm trying to integrate more linux/unix into my new workplace because I feel its more efficent and more secure (plus I hate when people are M$ only because thats the only things they know and for no other reason but that).

Guess its time to do some more research into Solaris and see if its a better route to go then Ubuntu Servers.