Red Hat Enterprise OpenStack Platform Course CL210

Moved this post over to this virtualization forum, since this is really where it belongs. Also wanted to point out that this class would be beneficial for anyone working with OpenStack, not just RHEL OSP.

Took me a while to get time to post a summary of this course. I really wanted to do it justice, because it was a great class. I believe there is only one guy teaching the class for Red Hat and he's great. I've taken a lot of classes and this guy was the best instructor I've experienced. He knew the technology inside and out, the past/future of the project, and had enough experience to talk about specific implementations and best practices in custom buildouts. Not only that, but he stays up on every OpenStack release.

What a great course, I really can't say enough. If you need OpenStack training, go take this class. We covered every major piece and had time to spare to talk about the other pieces not required for a base install (ceilometer, nagios, custom network plugins, etc.). Very in-depth discussion on every major piece and how they all fit together, as well as how to do small custom configurations (it was only 4 days, so you can't do too much).

In the end, the exam is but a small piece of what's covered in the class, but the exam covers what a sysadmin would need to do to get OpenStack up and running using RHEL OpenStack Platform.

If anybody has any questions or wants to discuss OpenStack, hit me up!

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Comments

Essendon

Thanks for the feedback. The quality of a course greatly depends on the instructor and the skill level of the class, sounds like you had lots of both.

OpenStack is one of those things I'd like to delve into, the paucity of time prevents me from pursuing it. Are there any free resources you'd recommend? I should probably start reading up on OpenStack on the commute to work.

Zentraedi

Thanks for the info. I actually took an OpenStack course using Ubuntu this past week and it was embarrassingly bad. Basically everyday was the instructor troubleshooting, not being able to get something to work and then saying he's figure it out overnight and get back to us.

It's a bit unfortunate since I was so excited before with a bunch of upcoming tech tying into OpenStack, but after the course I felt like OpenStack was Linux in 1996.

jmritenour

If you want more depth, there's also courses focused on Neutron, qpid, rabbitmq & openstack HA. I'm hoping to get into the Neutron course sometime early next year, but it's not offered internally very frequently, and when it does it doesn't always mesh up with my schedule.

darkerosxx

Essendon wrote: »

Are there any free resources you'd recommend? I should probably start reading up on OpenStack on the commute to work.

Honestly, the best place to start is the official documentation. Read the architecture guides and the operations guides. The saying goes you don't really know OpenStack until you cut your teeth doing an install manually, so the real barrier to entry is time.

darkerosxx

Zentraedi wrote: »

Thanks for the info. I actually took an OpenStack course using Ubuntu this past week and it was embarrassingly bad. Basically everyday was the instructor troubleshooting, not being able to get something to work and then saying he's figure it out overnight and get back to us.

It's a bit unfortunate since I was so excited before with a bunch of upcoming tech tying into OpenStack, but after the course I felt like OpenStack was Linux in 1996.

Yeah, OpenStack is still in its infancy. It's an incredible suite that can make money on the cheap, if you're good at it, but it's still young. There's lots to do by ways of bugs and feature development. Speaking of, that's an excellent way to get involved in the project. Sign up, test it as you'd use it, report bugs.

QHalo

darkerosxx wrote: »

Honestly, the best place to start is the official documentation. Read the architecture guides and the operations guides. The saying goes you don't really know OpenStack until you cut your teeth doing an install manually, so the real barrier to entry is time.

This is so much true. I went through doing it from scratch in my lab and now I know why people do it once, then figure out how to automate it afterwards. So much typing, but I learned quite a bit. OpenStack definitely interests me very much. However lots of times I think my linux skills need to be much deeper and sharper to be someone who can functionally manage an install.

tombrady

I took CL210 some time back and I believe Joe was the instructor name and he was great. I took the RHEL OSP4.0/Havana. I assume you took the latest RHEL OSP5.0 ? I believe in OSP5.0 AMQP changed to RabbitMQ instead of Qpid. Since you have taken both new and old exams, do you see a significant difference in the coverage ? I might try taking the EX210 but will have to ramp up on the changes. Specially with all the chnages in RHEL 7 such as systemd. I have read that turning off Network Manager is now a best practice and the packstack installer will turn off firewalld and install iptables.

darkerosxx

I can't give out exam details, but my class covered OSP5 and the exam was very similar in difficulty for me as OSP4. I know that doesn't help you, but it's all I can say. Sorry.

asummers

I have a question please .... I did the RedHat online course rather than a classroom course and unfortunately that meant that there was no one to ask questions of ...

The course materials get you to manually (and somewhat painfully) install each component. Whilst this may give you a good understanding of how things hang together is hugely time consuming.

The published exam requirements which can be found on Redhats official site Certified System Administrator in Red Hat OpenStack exam - EX210 | Red Hat which loosely translates to:

1. Install
2. Configure

Regarding point 1, I can not see why someone would want to install manually in production or in the exam. As Redhat exams are live-exams - presumably the quickest route to fulfilling an objective seems sensible.

Regarding the second point, from the course material produced - some of the exam topics are not clearly covered in the training e.g. "Configure images at instantiation" doesn't seem to tie in with any particular area of the course.

So overall am a little confused.