Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)

Today I earned the Red Hat Certified Engineer certification.  It was the result of about six months of study, many set backs, and hours of lab work.

If you read my previous post about the RHCSA exam, most of it holds true for the RHCE exam.  I used the same resources as before along with LiseNet, and CertDepot.

The exam was pretty difficult and I ran in several problems that took a lot of time to troubleshoot and resolve.  At one point I thought I was going to fail but ended up passing with a 243 out of 300.  I got the results two hours after completing the exam while it had taken around two days to get the results for the RHCSA.  I wrote the kiosk version of the exam (EX300K) rather than the classroom exam, so I was in a room by myself with someone watching me via camera.

My advise for this exam is to learn how to do everything from the command-line.  You should still install the GUI to make things easier for testing and cut and pasting from terminals.  However you should know how to configure everything using the command-line tools and not have to rely upon the GUI or TUI tools as they do not always work.  Make sure you know the major topics well and go through multiple practice tests and labs (LiseNet has a very good practice test which will help a lot). 

Like I mentioned in the RHCSA post, use more than one source for study, this is even more important for the RHCE exam.  If you rely upon one source you will not cover all of the material that's required.  Every source covers all of the topics but do not cover every configuration scenario that is presented on the exam.  I was asked to do things that I've never covered specifically even though I'd done labs based on the topic.

Another tip is to know every topic in depth and don't just gloss over something and just learn the basics or solely what the study material you are using covers.  I fell into this trap and it cost me a lot of time and marks on the exam.

It took me the full 3.5 hours to complete the exam even though I didn't get everything working.  It's the only exam I've ever broken a sweat writing.  I'm glad it's over though.

Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA)

After a long time I've finally earned my first Linux certification, the Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA).

I began formally preparing in October 2016, wrote the exam February 3 2017 and received my results today.  283/300.

I've been viewed as mostly a Windows guy, however I've been working with Linux for almost as long as I've been working with Windows.  My goal has always been to get my Linux skills on-par or better than my Windows skills.

The RHCSA covers Linux administration skills at a basic level and is a prerequisite to the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) certification.

The materials I used to prepare for the exam were; Red Hat RHCSA/RHCE 7 Cert Guide: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (EX200 and EX300) and LinuxAcademy.com.  I recommend using at least two resources as some things are covered differently depending on the resources and it's good to know multiple ways to do things.

The key to passing this exam is doing labs over and over again until you can configure everything from memory only relying upon the resources that come with a Red Hat installation.  This means you have to be able to configure everything using only the man pages, info pages and included documentation.  There is no Internet access during the exam.

Other tips are be sure that all your configuration survives reboots.  So reboot your machine at least once during the exam.  

When working with the /etc/fstab file you can use the mount -a command to mount everything in the file to ensure that you don't get dumped to a emergency shell upon reboot if there are errors.

Learn how to configure everything using both the command line and the GUI and TUI interfaces.  Use the fastest method to configure what you're asked to do.  In the real world you'd be using the command line but this is about passing the exam and time is of the essence.

Be sure to read the questions carefully as I had to redo some things from scratch after re-reading some questions.

The exam isn't overly difficult as I was able to complete all questions but two in 45 minutes.  If you have previous experience it shouldn't be too difficult, just be sure you cover the topics that you're not familiar with.

The RHCSA doesn't carry as much weight as the RHCE, but it's a required stepping stone to it and I learned a lot while preparing for it.

Up next is the RHCE.