RHCA EX401 Resources

*work in progress as I study for the exam, will be WIP until I pass*

The EX401 exam "Red Hat Enterprise Deployment and Systems Management" covers mainly using Red Hat Satellite in an effective way to deploy and manage your systems, software, and users' access to that platform. While this does cover and use the proprietary Red Hat Satellite software, the Spacewalk software is the open source version of Satellite. I would not recommend using that to study, but instead actually using Satellite since that's what you'll use on the exam, which makes this one of the more difficult exams to study for IF you don't have access to that software. If you do have access, this exam is one of the easier ones to prepare for, as you can easily set up your own lab to practice the exam objectives without doing much pre-setup to make the lab life-like.

Here is the course outline, if you go that route

Here are the exam objectives

What I'm going to do is just list the exam objectives and link to resources where one could study those objectives:

Configure Red Hat Network (RHN) Satellite server
- Official Docs: https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Satellite/5.6/html/Installation_Guide/index.html
- Steps: \m/ -_- \m/: RH401: Install an RHN Satellite server

Create child channels of a base channel
- Official Docs:
  - Cloning channels: https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Satellite/5.6/html/User_Guide/chap-Red_Hat_Satellite-User_Guide-Cloning_Software_Channels_and_Errata.html
  - Spacewalk-clone-by-date man page: man spacewalk-clone-by-date howto

Create different types of RHN users
- Steps: \m/ -_- \m/: RH401: Create different types of users

Create groups and add group administrators
- Steps: \m/ -_- \m/: RH401: Create groups and add group admins

Create configuration channels
- Steps: \m/ -_- \m/: RH401: Create configuration channels

Create a custom RPM spec file and build a binary RPM from provided source code
- Steps: \m/ -_- \m/: RH401: Create a custom RPM spec file and build a binary RPM from source code

Upload custom RPMS to an RHN Satellite server
- Steps: \m/ -_- \m/: RH401: Upload custom RPMS to an RHN Satellite server

Create activation keys
- Steps: \m/ -_- \m/: RH401: Create activation keys

Assign groups, software channels, and configuration channels to an activation key

Configure errata

Provision RHN Satellite Server clients using kickstart

Set up an SVN version control repository
- Steps: \m/ -_- \m/: RH401: Set up an SVN version control repository

Kickstart a machine using Cobbler

Manage virtual systems using RHN Satellite server

Clone channels and use a cloned channel

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Comments

UnixGuy

Thanks for the review. I thought a lot about this (and RHCA in general), and I'm still not sure if they're really worth while. You're more likely to deal with things like MySQL or Puppet on the job rather than Satellite. Unless you work for Red Hat (or Planning to)

darkerosxx

Mostly these exams cover underlying "you should have these as a seasoned professional linux admin" type skills/knowledge.

EX401 - baremetal provisioning, dhcp, pxe, kickstarts, software management fundamentals, configuration management fundamentals, revision control, everything RPM, etc.

EX413 - everything security for open source infrastructure OS and apps

EX436 - everything storage/clustering

EX442 - everything system monitoring and performance tuning using open source tools

So, on the whole, they're helpful... question is are they worth the money when you can study everything on your own, and that depends on how diligent you are in your own studies and whether you want to have the cert to justify your work to peers and/or show your status in the workforce.

UnixGuy

Pretty sire they're very challenging and extremely useful, but my point is that they focus on tools that are not always used on the job. Like Satellite for example, if you don't use it as part of your job then he exam becomes extremely hard to take. Plus the cost!

darkerosxx

So after reading more into the exam, the material I have is for the older course which didn't cover SAM and the 5.6 Satellite code. Given that and the fact that 2 of the exams (436, 442) I have up-to-date course material for, I'm going to go for those while they're still the same material, then come back to this one and the new updated 413 exam.

astudent

Thank you for sharing.

Satellite 6 was released. Is it going to replace the Satellite 5 in the exam soon?

joemc3

Here is the link. A good read!

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/pdf/System_Administrators_Guide/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-7-System_Administrators_Guide-en-US.pdf

MrAgent

Thanks for the link. Ill take a further look later today.

Verities

Good stuff. Dark posted all those RHEL 7 guides in the RHCE thread a few months ago.

JockVSJock

astudent wrote: »

Thank you for sharing.
Satellite 6 was released. Is it going to replace the Satellite 5 in the exam soon?

I'm currently in the process of upgrading RH Satellite from 5.3 to 5.6 and that will be supported until sometime in 2017.

Our RH Satellite is disconnected and a bit of a pain in the ass to setup.

astudent

Verities wrote: »

Good stuff. Dark posted all those RHEL 7 guides in the RHCE thread a few months ago.

Thank you for the reply.
How is your CISSP preparation? Saw that you have a blog for it.