RHCSA and RHCE exams

Well I've attended the RH299 accelerated RHCSA / RHCE training course
and I'm now an RHCE. The course itself was fine, the official
course manual was easy to follow and had enough hands on sections to
reinforce the learning. If you're an experienced admin who's had
exposure to the services in the exam objectives (like NFS, Samba,
postfix and apache) then it's probably enough to give you a good chance
at passing. I was missing a couple so the instruction was very useful.
Before taking the course I read large chunks of the "Red Hat Linux
Certification Study Guide" by Micheal Jang. It's a good book for people
looking to learn Linux in general but if you are planning to attempt the
RHCE it's an excellent resource - just make sure you do the labs - which
I didn't and regretted when I saw the exam.
RHCSA exam was straight forward and if you'd been paying attention in
the class you'd be able to finish with plenty of time to double (and
even treble) check the tasks.
The RHCE was much harder (and both were pretty broad in what they
expected you to know) and it seems like most of us were lulled in to a
false sense of security from the mornings RHCSA. Most of the class
finished around time, with all of us having just enough time to do
some checking.
I'm not very practised at taking exams, my ITIL foundation is the only
other exam I've done in over a decade, especially ones that are fully
hands on and I must admit I started to crack about halfway through the
time. I started to make silly mistakes that were stopping me from
meeting the objectives. Did a reboot of the host, watched the calming
boot messages and managed to get myself back on track. I have a lot of
respect for those of you with handfuls of certs under your belt.
Got the results via email that night, scored in the low ninety percent
on each, so I'm happy with the result and thinking about what to try next.
and I'm now an RHCE. The course itself was fine, the official
course manual was easy to follow and had enough hands on sections to
reinforce the learning. If you're an experienced admin who's had
exposure to the services in the exam objectives (like NFS, Samba,
postfix and apache) then it's probably enough to give you a good chance
at passing. I was missing a couple so the instruction was very useful.
Before taking the course I read large chunks of the "Red Hat Linux
Certification Study Guide" by Micheal Jang. It's a good book for people
looking to learn Linux in general but if you are planning to attempt the
RHCE it's an excellent resource - just make sure you do the labs - which
I didn't and regretted when I saw the exam.
RHCSA exam was straight forward and if you'd been paying attention in
the class you'd be able to finish with plenty of time to double (and
even treble) check the tasks.
The RHCE was much harder (and both were pretty broad in what they
expected you to know) and it seems like most of us were lulled in to a
false sense of security from the mornings RHCSA. Most of the class
finished around time, with all of us having just enough time to do
some checking.
I'm not very practised at taking exams, my ITIL foundation is the only
other exam I've done in over a decade, especially ones that are fully
hands on and I must admit I started to crack about halfway through the
time. I started to make silly mistakes that were stopping me from
meeting the objectives. Did a reboot of the host, watched the calming
boot messages and managed to get myself back on track. I have a lot of
respect for those of you with handfuls of certs under your belt.
Got the results via email that night, scored in the low ninety percent
on each, so I'm happy with the result and thinking about what to try next.
Comments
@ noor00n,
Look at the objectives on Red hat's website, if you know how to do everything on their..you'll pass.
Are the exams completely hands on, or are there also multiple choice questions?
Again, congrats on your accomplishment.
Goal for 2014: RHCA
Goal for 2015: CCDP