RHCSA | RHCE 6 Resources

NightShade03

Well it's that time again for updating the list of resources since Red Hat has now moved over to version 6 of the RHCE and changed the RHCT -> RHCSA. Here is the list of resources you should find useful.

RHCSA

The RHCSA exam has officially replaced the RHCT. The exam targets those with around 1 - 2 years of Red Hat Linux administration skills.

RHCSA Exam Objections
https://www.redhat.com/certification/rhcsa/objectives/

Red Hat Official Training Courses
https://www.redhat.com/courses/rh124_red_hat_system_administration_1/
https://www.redhat.com/courses/rh135_red_hat_system_administration_2_and_rhcsa_exam/

How much does the RHCSA cost?

A: The RHCSA exam costs only $400.

RHCE

While the RHCE exam hasn't changed names the objectives are completely different so make sure you read up on them.

RHCE Exam Objectives
redhat.com | Exam Objectives

Red Hat Official Training Courses
https://www.redhat.com/courses/rh255_red_hat_system_administration_3_and_rhce_exam/

Red Hat Exams FAQ
https://www.redhat.com/certification/rhce/faq/

#1 Asked Question - Is my RHCE valid?

A: Red Hat has completely changed how long certifications stay valid for. Starting with the RHCSA | RHCE 6 you certification is only valid for 3 years from the date you certify (this is similar to Cisco's renewal policy).

How much does the RHCE cost?

A: With the new changes comes new pricing! The RHCE exam is now only $400 (down from $800).

RHCSA | RHCE Resources

Virtual Lab
VirtualBox - Downloads - VirtualBox
CentOS 5.6 - Index of /centos/5.6/isos
CentOS 6.0 - [Coming Soon]

Tips & Tricks
TipsAndTricks - CentOS Wiki

How-Tos
Security Nut: RHCSA
Security Nut: RHCE
HowTos/SELinux - CentOS Wiki

Books

My Personal Favorite
Amazon.com: Hands-on Guide to the Red Hat(R) Exams: RHCSA™ and RHCE(R) Cert Guide and Lab Manual (Certification Guide) (9780321767950): Damian Tommasino: Books

Michael Jang (updated for RHCE 6, due out in July 2011)
Amazon.com: RHCSA/RHCE Red Hat Linux Certification Study Guide (Exams EX200 & EX300), 6th Edition (Certification Press) (9780071765657): Michael Jang: Books

Red Hat Installation Guide
Installation Guide

Red Hat Deployment Guide
Deployment Guide

Red Hat Storage Guide
Storage Guide

Red Hat Security Guide
Security Guide

Red Hat SELinux Guide
SELinux Guide

Red Hat Virtualization Guide
Virtualization Guide

Videos

RHCSA Video Series - [Coming Soon]

RHCE Video Series - [Coming Soon]

joneno

Are you working on a video series nightshade? wow!! that wud be awesome....i kinda like the way the book progresses. I do have jangs book too, but the structure of your text is cool...I really mean that. It makes it easier for linux newbies like me.

dyultimate

Hi Damian,
I bought your book to study for RHCSA. Going good so far. I notice that there's no answers the labs at the end of each chapter or Lab Exam 1 & 2 at the end of the book. Where can we get the answers from?

thanks

Bodanel

You could use Scientific Linux 6 until Centos 6 is here. Scientific Linux is another clone of RHEL

YuckTheFankees

Any more information on the video series?

varelg

Anyone tried to lab rh in the cloud, specifically the lab described in Tomassino's book, and regularly accessed it via his/her tablet?
My current lab needs serious update but I just don't have the budget to do it.

varelg

Maybe I didn't quite explained it: what I am looking for is a cloud- based virtual lab with 5-6 virtual machines each running Linux, that is easily accessible over the web from a tablet... and priced less than a new higher-end laptop

ChooseLife

varelg wrote: »

Maybe I didn't quite explained it: what I am looking for is a cloud- based virtual lab with 5-6 virtual machines each running Linux, that is easily accessible over the web from a tablet... and priced less than a new higher-end laptop

I don't see why you could not build them in Amazon AWS and power them up and down as needed. Should turn out very cheap

onesaint

A good review of the RHCSA exam from Lethe's Tuxforge can be found here.

Slowhand

It's not RHCSA/RHCE specific, but LinuxCBT has a video series on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 available now. I watched a few videos from this vendor a while back, and I have to say they were pretty informative. I wouldn't put them in the same class as (most of) CBT Nuggets, but definitely worth a look.

AceRimmer

onesaint wrote: »

A good review of the RHCSA exam from Lethe's Tuxforge can be found here.

An excellent review, I'd say .

onesaint

Slowhand wrote: »

It's not RHCSA/RHCE specific, but LinuxCBT has a video series on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 available now. I watched a few videos from this vendor a while back, and I have to say they were pretty informative. I wouldn't put them in the same class as (most of) CBT Nuggets, but definitely worth a look.

I'll check out the demo, thanks! Wow. That CBT is 40 hours long and $99 fora one month subscription.

Oddly, CBT Nuggets doesn't offer a RHEL 6 (either cert) training. If I recall, they had one for RHEL 5.

VTC offers a CBT on RHCSA. It's 7.5 hours and very to the point. A one month subscription is $29.

brownwrap

I used LinuxCBT for my Solaris training, among other things. Although there was a one to one correspondence with the Solaris certification track, they were very good videos. I don't like the way they restructured their pricing. I would rather purchase a DVD outright, versus renting media.

effekted

Really want to focus on learning RH better so I think I may try and give the LinuxCBT subscription a go...

techinthewoods

Wow, is NightShade the author of the Hands on Guide to RHCSA & RHCE? I just ordered it from Amazon. Can't wait to get my hands on it.

I would love to hear more about the video series you mentioned.

YuckTheFankees

go to www.vtc.com and search red hat

techinthewoods

YuckTheFankees wrote: »

go to www.vtc.com and search red hat

Nice. 3 good looking series of videos there. Are you using any of them? I haven't clicked through to the pricing yet... lol.

YuckTheFankees

It's only 30/ per month. They are decent videos, and they will definitely help out.

onesaint

techinthewoods wrote: »

Nice. 3 good looking series of videos there. Are you using any of them? I haven't clicked through to the pricing yet... lol.

I subscribed for a month to VTC. It's 30$, so I figured why not. Although the videos do cover a lot, they are super brief and refer to the man pages often, as opposed to elaborating on the commands / concepts.

Linux CBT (cred. to YuckTheFankees) is more expensive at 99$, though it looks much more in depth. However, it doesn't completely align with RHCSA topics. For instance I don't think SELinux is covered in the EL 6 CBT.

ETA: The one month for 99$, like VTC gives access to all of the Linux CBT videos.

brownwrap

I purchased Solaris from LinuxCBT, purchased, when they were selling DVDs. I don't like the idea of 'renting' media. I will say the LinuxCBT were excellent quality and the material was very well covered, it just didn't map to the certification one to one.

techinthewoods

Thanks YuckTheFankees & onesaint. Both look great and I agree that the price is more than fair. I'm checking both out as time permits.

YuckTheFankees

techinthewoods wrote: »

Thanks YuckTheFankees & onesaint. Both look great and I agree that the price is more than fair. I'm checking both out as time permits.

No problem at all. Have you started to study for the exam?

**I really enjoyed Michael Jangs book but it does skip around a lot (the only small negative)

onesaint

techinthewoods wrote: »

Thanks YuckTheFankees & onesaint. Both look great and I agree that the price is more than fair. I'm checking both out as time permits.

No problem! Ah, time permitting... If only there were closer to 30 hours in a day. I have something like 6 or 7 books lined up for when I'm done with the RHCSA. Which incidentally, they (RH) just canceled my scheduled exam. I had to reschedule it another few weeks out and the location adds a 45 minute drive (but, hey, it's next to Disneyland!).

YuckTheFankees wrote: »

**I really enjoyed Michael Jangs book but it does skip around a lot (the only small negative)

It takes some getting used to. Initially, I was working along while reading, then it seemed that wasn't necessarily Jang's intention, yet he refers to things you should have set up in later chapters. Still, there is no implicit statement that these things should be set up. a tad annoying, but otherwise an easy read and great book.

I think I'm going to pick up Tommasino's book as well and run through the labs in there.

techinthewoods

YuckTheFankees wrote: »

No problem at all. Have you started to study for the exam?

**I really enjoyed Michael Jangs book but it does skip around a lot (the only small negative)

I passed Linux+ today and am starting in on RHCSA study tonight. Not sure where I'm going to start. My books for it are on the way, hoping they arrive monday. How is your RHCSA study going so far? What all have you done?

techinthewoods

onesaint wrote: »

No problem! Ah, time permitting... If only there were closer to 30 hours in a day. I have something like 6 or 7 books lined up for when I'm done with the RHCSA. Which incidentally, they (RH) just canceled my scheduled exam. I had to reschedule it another few weeks out and the location adds a 45 minute drive (but, hey, it's next to Disneyland!).

It takes some getting used to. Initially, I was working along while reading, then it seemed that wasn't necessarily Jang's intention, yet he refers to things you should have set up in later chapters. Still, there is no implicit statement that these things should be set up. a tad annoying, but otherwise an easy read and great book.

I think I'm going to pick up Tommasino's book as well and run through the labs in there.

I've heard that same thing about Jang's book many times, which is why I ordered Tommasino's book too. It would be cool if someone would do a quick writeup of the out-of-order steps in Jang's book and which step to jump to for a quick solution.

30 hour days.... wouldn't that be great!

onesaint

techinthewoods wrote: »

I've heard that same thing about Jang's book many times, which is why I ordered Tommasino's book too. It would be cool if someone would do a quick writeup of the out-of-order steps in Jang's book and which step to jump to for a quick solution.

30 hour days.... wouldn't that be great!

Funny, I wrote this up while I was going through the first two chapters. After that it flows pretty well.

Chapter 1 Tasks:

1. Read through chapter 1 without attempting exercises or labs
2. Note drive partition suggestions (somewhat important for VM labs).
3. Note basic installation steps
4. Download demo of RHEL, download Scientific Linux 6 / CentOS 6
   1. I grabbed a 30 day evaluation of RHEL (requires registration) and the flavors
5. Do Exercise 1.1 - Partitioning during install of RHEL (or flavor) on VM server
   1. if you setup the VM host as part of exercise 1, ignore the partitions he noted as you will need more space for VMs
   2. I'm working remotely, so setup VNC for host machine. Here's good instructions.
6. Follow along with noted basic installation steps
7. If using a server to host VMs, ensure it is KVM capable Intel vmx or AMD svm
   1. #egrep "vmx|svm" /proc/cpuinfo | less
      1. in less type "/vmx" to search for vmx in the results
8. Setup and configure default file sharing services (http & ftp) on VM host
9. Do Exercise 1.2 - configure Apache and vsFTP on VM host
10. Do Lab 1
11. Do Lab 2 - copy install media contents to the share directory on VM host
12. Do Lab 3

Chapter 2 Tasks:

1. Ensure KVM is installed (pdf p.4-6)
2. Ensure the KVM modules are installed correctly
   1. #lsmod | grep kvm
3. run "virt-manager" with root privileges from a shell within the GUI
   1. The hypervisor (virt-manager) is supposed to prompt for the root password if run from a normal user, but I was unable to run it at all that way. Thus, VMM was not an option from the user's desktop menu
4. Do Exercise 2-1 within the hypervisor
5. Configure and create a VM (pdf p.15-19)
6. Do Exercise 2-2 with the VM you just created (why wasn't that an exercise?)
7. Note the VM deletion method on p.24
8. Configure VM server to be a kickstart server (pdf p.29-31)
9. Do Exercise 2-3
10. Install kickstart configurator and create kickstart file with it.
    1. *Name it something different than the ks config from Exercise 2-3
11. Configure X over SSH on VM server or one of the VMs
12. Work through the 8 Labs.

techinthewoods

That is fantastic! Thanks so much for the help. I would +1 rep you but I already did yesterday and it won't let me again so soon. (I also rep'd yuckthefankees) Thanks for the help!

It's really encouraging to see such a supportive community.

onesaint

Thanks for the rep!

techinthewoods

onesaint wrote: »

Funny, I wrote this up while I was going through the first two chapters. After that it flows pretty well.

Chapter 1 Tasks:

1. Read through chapter 1 without attempting exercises or labs
2. Note drive partition suggestions (somewhat important for VM labs).
3. Note basic installation steps
4. Download demo of RHEL, download Scientific Linux 6 / CentOS 6
   1. I grabbed a 30 day evaluation of RHEL (requires registration) and the flavors
5. Do Exercise 1.1 - Partitioning during install of RHEL (or flavor) on VM server
   1. if you setup the VM host as part of exercise 1, ignore the partitions he noted as you will need more space for VMs
   2. I'm working remotely, so setup VNC for host machine. Here's good instructions.
6. Follow along with noted basic installation steps
7. If using a server to host VMs, ensure it is KVM capable Intel vmx or AMD svm
   1. #egrep "vmx|svm" /proc/cpuinfo | less
      1. in less type "/vmx" to search for vmx in the results
8. Setup and configure default file sharing services (http & ftp) on VM host
9. Do Exercise 1.2 - configure Apache and vsFTP on VM host
10. Do Lab 1
11. Do Lab 2 - copy install media contents to the share directory on VM host
12. Do Lab 3

Chapter 2 Tasks:

1. Ensure KVM is installed (pdf p.4-6)
2. Ensure the KVM modules are installed correctly
   1. #lsmod | grep kvm
3. run "virt-manager" with root privileges from a shell within the GUI
   1. The hypervisor (virt-manager) is supposed to prompt for the root password if run from a normal user, but I was unable to run it at all that way. Thus, VMM was not an option from the user's desktop menu
4. Do Exercise 2-1 within the hypervisor
5. Configure and create a VM (pdf p.15-19)
6. Do Exercise 2-2 with the VM you just created (why wasn't that an exercise?)
7. Note the VM deletion method on p.24
8. Configure VM server to be a kickstart server (pdf p.29-31)
9. Do Exercise 2-3
10. Install kickstart configurator and create kickstart file with it.
    1. *Name it something different than the ks config from Exercise 2-3
11. Configure X over SSH on VM server or one of the VMs
12. Work through the 8 Labs.

I noticed the book has so much repition between "exercises" and labs. In chapter 2 for example, it has me build the server1.example.com server during an exercise, then has me build it again in Lab 1 using the same name.

Does he intend for a lot of system deletions? It never mentions deleting them, and then future labs seem to reference these, like "using the system from lab 1..." . Well, no, I deleted the system from Lab 1 because you had me build an identical system in Exercise 2-1 with the same name and ip address.

Same with Lab 3 and Lab 4. Both are building the tester1.example.com system. Which one do I keep?

It does seem much more linear in chapters 3+.

onesaint

techinthewoods wrote: »

I noticed the book has so much repition between "exercises" and labs. In chapter 2 for example, it has me build the server1.example.com server during an exercise, then has me build it again in Lab 1 using the same name.

Does he intend for a lot of system deletions? It never mentions deleting them, and then future labs seem to reference these, like "using the system from lab 1..." . Well, no, I deleted the system from Lab 1 because you had me build an identical system in Exercise 2-1 with the same name and ip address.

Same with Lab 3 and Lab 4. Both are building the tester1.example.com system. Which one do I keep?

It does seem much more linear in chapters 3+.

Chapter 6 starts to get a bit all over again.

I deleted the VMs and build them up again in 2-3/4. At that point in the book he is just trying to get you familiar with installing VMs with the KVM options. Plus for the rest of the labs I've been using server1.example.com and haven't touched tester1 much.

onesaint

Found this the other day. The RHCSA topics are all covered, but it looks like the RHCE stuff is still in progress.

Main Page - The Unofficial Guide to the RHCE