New Certification

it_consultant

I have not gotten a new cert in a few years and after an embarrassing lack of knowledge on Linux in a phone screen (the answers to the specific questions I have since committed to memory) my new cert path is the RHCSA/RHCE track. I might segue into those tests with Linux+ or LPIC if the material in the RHCSA proves to be too intense for a Linux beginner. Anyone here have any experience with these certs/tests?

N2IT

IT

Something tells me with your aptitude and experience will allow you to go straight to RHCSA and skip Linux +.

***Just an assumption

coffeeluvr

I passed the RHCT(now the RHCSA) and the RHCE in December 2010. RH exams are a beast. They are very tricky. They are hands-on exams...so you either know your stuff or you fail.....cause there are no multiple choice or T/F questions. They are pretty expensive too.

it_consultant

N2IT wrote: »

IT

Something tells me with your aptitude and experience will allow you to go straight to RHCSA and skip Linux +.

***Just an assumption

This is the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a while!

I scrolled down in the forums and found that there is a small portion of the boards dedicated to RHCSA/RHCSE, so if the moderator wants to move this thread to that board, that would be OK.

I spent hours on virtualbox over the last couple of days setting up and breaking CENTOS servers. I can see how, if you never worked on servers before, how intimidating jumping into the linux world is. My cousin just got hired on as a Senior Consultant for Red Hat, if I have any trouble I can bother him.

lordy

Having gone the whole LPIC and RH route I would recommend skipping LPIC-1 / Linux+. Being a learning-by-doing Admin myself for a few years I found that I really had to learn some odd stuff (like modems and printing) that I had never touched before. LPIC-2 however was more real-world and therefore easier for me.

The biggest point for RH* however is recognition. When I added LPIC-1/2/3 to my social network profiles not much happened. However, adding RHCSA and RHCE later brought a lot of people to my page.

Actually being hands-on made the Red Hat exams easier for me. It doesn't matter how you approach a problem, you just need to implement a working solution. And having the man pages available frees you from learning dozens of commands and their odd command line switches that multiple-choice exams often ask for.

it_consultant

I was wondering if the servers you test on have been crippled in that sense. Like on the Cisco exams a lot of the help commands on the labs have been removed. As I have been plodding along in my little training book "Michael Jang" I notice that I think I am going to like this Linux thing.

I have one small complaint though, and I have seen this before with cert books. In the first two chapters we go through automated installs of RH with an HTTP server and kickstart script. Pretty cool, so when I am labbing this up I am expecting to run the automated installation. Nope, not until later chapters (under "Package Management") do we get how to set up a software repository.

coffeeluvr

lordy wrote: »

Actually being hands-on made the Red Hat exams easier for me. It doesn't matter how you approach a problem, you just need to implement a working solution. And having the man pages available frees you from learning dozens of commands and their odd command line switches that multiple-choice exams often ask for.

I agree 100%...doesn't matter how you approach the problem...as long as you implement a working solution. The man pages are a life saver. As far as a good study guide, Michael Jang's is the absolute best in my opinion. I also used his training videos in my preparation for the RH exams.

lordy

You have all the man pages available and in RHCSA there is enough time to read them, if you know what you are doing.
In RHCE however the clock is one of your many opponents and you should only use them to look up command line switches and other small details.

In my RHCSA exam I was faced with a task that I had never implemented before. With time being plenty I entered "apropos <my task>" and read through all the man pages. I implemented it through trial and error but I think I got it done.

In RHCE I had a different problem. I knew how to configure something but I didn't know which config file to put my settings in to make things persistent across reboots (very important!). So I ended up writing a small boot-up script that would do what I did manually. Worked like a charm and I scored 300/300