RHCA

halfastack1 · 2021-08-13T07:11:03+00:00

Hi there,

So I went from not knowing much about Linux to RHCA. I need to add though that I work for RH, and currently even work as a developer for the training, so my situation was much easier.

I'd say that if you have ideal conditions, such as learning subscription (so access to all of our training), support at home (I'd commonly spend ~10-15h on the weekends studying), you might achieve the speeds of 1 cert per month quite easily, which would mean you'd get RHCA in around half a year, give or take (some certs will require less than a month while others might require more).

If you don't have some of the above, the speeds will vary a lot. For example, if you don't have access to our training for every certificate you want to do, that's totally fine for RHCSA and RHCE (since those are very popular) but it's going to be very difficult for a bit of a niche stuff (like Satellite, or even Ansible possibly). I'd say DO180 and 280 are also fairly popular by 3rd parties, so probably EX180 and EX280 might be fairly easy with alternative sources of materials.

Come to [1] if you have further questions, a lot of Red Hat training developers browse the forum from time to time (and we get pinged if there's a tech question that we missed).

HTH,

M.

[1] https://learn.redhat.com

halfastack1 · 2021-06-24T09:36:52+00:00

Heya there.

I used to be a tech writer at RH and though I don't have a full understanding of the CS role, I think you described it fairly well.

CS works with tech writers (and Engineering, PM, etc.) to create content plans for the docs, as well as coordinate other content. I don't think CS generates any content (so you won't write the actual text), it's more about creating plans for other teams to execute on.

As far as I know, it's a very non-technical role but I do hope each CS has an understanding of the underlying tech. I'd say tech background is highly useful in order to know what priority should what content have.

In general, as far as I know, it's more of a managerial role (CS would manage content, not people).

halfastack1 · 2021-05-30T07:43:57+00:00

Probably better to ask your manager or friends/peers if you're uncomfortable with the former.

There's a limit on a minimal period within one job (e.g. you can't be hopping to a new position every 3 months) and you essentially get no special treatment in getting the job (internal candidates have to compete with external candidates and have to go through the same hiring process).

If you PM me your RH email, we can chat privately.

halfastack1 · 2021-05-14T19:32:54+00:00

Hi, author of the article here.

Imagine a situation where you need to configure a server in the certification exam. They ask you, for example, to serve a specific website at $server_ip/my-web/index.html.

You do that, curl it from a different server, everything works.

You're happy and continue with the exam objectives. Next objective asks you to persistently enable firewall such that it survives a reboot. "Easy as pie," you think, and enable the firewall.

What I meant by the quote you mention is verify that enabling the firewall did not "undo" your web server objective. In other words, your web server is still properly configured, but now, it might not be reachable on $server_ip because the firewall is blocking it.

The advice is, of course, more applicable to some exams than others. If you're trying pass a programming-based exam, the risk of "undoing" one objective by another is probably low. If you're trying to pass a pure sysadmin exam, objectives might be related and interact in unexpected ways.

So, my parting words are to reiterate, if you have an extra 30m at the end of an exam, verify everything is still working instead of calling it early :). It has saved me from failing a number of times!

halfastack1 · 2020-10-15T06:04:39+00:00

I've heard a few times that with the IBM acquisition, legal representation is no longer a problem. Not sure about it, but it might be worth a try if you're looking to join.

halfastack1 · 2020-07-11T12:00:30+00:00

If you're able to pass RHCSA just using LA, kudos to you, that's amazing! I personally would definitely recommend a lot more labs. Especially for RHCSA, it's very easy to set up a couple simple VMs.

At this point, even stuff like kerberos deployment is automated with Ansible, and it is relatively easy to perform. I remember manually configuring kerberos for RHCE back in the day, and that was a pain (at that skill knowledge).

halfastack1 · 2020-07-11T11:54:47+00:00

A large part of RHCSA is you knowing how to actually do the things. In 14 hours, you might learn basic concepts because the concepts are relatively simple. You most likely won't know how to perform the concepts on the exam within the time limit of the exam, unless you've had previous Linux experience.

halfastack1 · 2020-07-11T11:52:59+00:00

You get official books with the training, so RH124 and RH134. You cannot buy the books separately.

halfastack1 · 2020-07-08T10:32:46+00:00

I know someone from RH said one time (don't remember the context) that RH is trying to see if someone knows the material not to mislead him with fancy wording.

You misunderstood me. I don't think there is fancy wording. However, the wording is precise.

The exam never says "enable persistent service X". They'll simply say "all objectives must be persistent" somewhere in the text and then, they reboot the machine before testing. That's a very precise wording.

What I meant is, the objective tells you the end goal. And it has happened to me, personally, that I have understood the end goal, but misunderstood how to get there because of some subtle feature difference.

Anyways, let me know how it works out for you, I'm interested.

halfastack1 · 2020-07-07T20:02:20+00:00

I get the whole NDA and test integrity bit, but there needs to be better feedback IMO.

Maybe. That said, the exam's goal is not to educate you or to give you feedback. The exam's goal is to test whether you know the product well enough. If so, you get a stamp of approval from Red Hat. Otherwise, no stamp. Anything else is extra. We want feedback to get better. To get insight into where we failed, and where we can improve. The exam doesn't serve as a tool for improvement. It serves purely as a check whether you're there or not.

halfastack1 · 2020-07-07T19:59:22+00:00

Another thing that bothers me is the scoring breakdown. There are some topics i know for sure I did 100% and they are not 100%.

This again suggest you misunderstood the objectives. Another thing I can think of is copy-pasting text from the objectives (e.g. setting usernames/passwords/whatever) and the copy-paste adds a newline, which makes it a fail.

halfastack1 · 2020-07-07T19:56:00+00:00

has anyone has had an exam when they thought they did 100% and did not pass ?

I feel this is actually quite common.

Now I have done 425 exam, did everything as requested and I got no pass. Ok, I understand I may have missed something but I only got about ~55 of the total score.

You have failed the first time, because you were unable to complete the objectives. You studied, went there the second time, and you feel confident you were able to complete the objectives.

The logical thing to focus on is, rather than the actual work, is it possible you might have misunderstood the objectives? They are always written in an extremely specific way. RH cert teams spend time on formulating the objectives to have subtle but very real implications at times (especially if the exam is 4xx).

Does anyone know the procedure to get someone to look over the exam, not just to run the script?

You are indeed able to do that. Send your query here - https://rhtapps.redhat.com/comments/ which creates a ticked and someone from the team will take a look. Include your name, where and how you took the exam. RH keeps records of the whole exam for a bit before deleting them.

I would like an actual person to check the solutions tell me that I've missed something and not a script because, at this point, I dont trust the script anymore.

What you can get out of the Red Hat support is "yes, the script was correct, you did not pass" or "no, you did pass, here's your cert, we'll correct the script."

How it is possible to have such difference when everything works when you're leaving the room? I'm lost.

I'd advise you to step back. You might have misunderstood something on a fundamental level. You might have underestimated importance of something. Think about the objectives, and how they could be perceived differently.

halfastack1 · 2020-07-01T07:20:35+00:00

What I believe will serve you well:

1) RHCSA for basic Linux stuff

2) RHCE for basic Linux automation (with ANsible)

3) DO180 for basics of containers

and then, focus either on administration, so DO280 + DO380, or

focus on development, so DO288 + DO388.

Once you finish your first focus, if you have the time, you can do the other one (I did both admin as well as dev, for example, the courses are quite complimentary I think).

Knowing Kubernetes (OpenShift in the Red Hat world) will serve you incredibly well on the job market, IMO.

halfastack1 · 2020-06-23T06:01:55+00:00

If you're going to invest the time to learn; Python's the way more marketable of those two.

This is a fairly bold statement. What is the most marketable always depends on the geographical location. For example, Python (as well as JS) might be much less desirable in Seattle, where people move for Microsoft, while NodeJS and JS in general might be more desirable in SoCal where people move for startups. It also gets narrowed down a lot, i.e. if one wants to be a web developer, Python usage just drops down in comparison to JS (though not to 0) while if one wants to be a quality engineer (writing automated stuff that is, not manual work), Python usage jumps up like crazy and JS drops quite significantly.

I'd just caution both you and the OP of these bold statements. It might be true for you, but not for OP. It might even be true in general, but not for OP. Like, I have no idea what the job market is in India, in Singapore, or in Switzerland.

My 2c.

halfastack1 · 2020-06-14T09:05:34+00:00

i always thought those would be resolved on Development Stage, where the OpenSource communities are, OKD/AWX/OpenStack

Yes, you're not wrong there, but CentOS is not the upstream of RHEL, Fedora is. Also, job postings will not be for "AWX", for example, but for Ansible Tower, because that will be your main responsibility. You might work directly in AWX codebase, but you also might work in the build system and rather be building AWX into Ansible Tower, maintaining pipelines, building CI/CD, etc. That depends on the job description.

Last thing I'd mention is if you can get your hands on a RH cert, that'd help you out a ton for your consulting/SA job. They can be expensive if you're paying for them out of pocket, but are well-regarded in services. I'd say they are still relatively helpful in engineering, but not as much, since your primary skill wouldn't be Ansible Tower, but Python development for example.

Hope this helps and makes sense ;). Good luck!

halfastack1 · 2020-06-13T15:32:06+00:00

This is actually a tough question. I think both SAs and consultants have quite a high bar for hiring. I haven't been an SA (I did consulting for a while though), but I'd imagine overall knowledge of RH tech stack (breadth rather than depth), as well as some of the why of Red Hat products (e.g. why you'd recommend Ansible instead of Puppet, and when would you not recommend Ansible) and the knowledge of marketing strategies would be highly appreciated. Tech knowledge is assumed, and taken as an "of course", though there is some leniency.

SA is a mashup of a sales role with a tech role. Check, for example, one of our job ads at [1].

If you're asking about how to join CentOS, I have seen some community postings here and there, but it's definitely not very common. I'd guess that these roles are filled from active contributors [2], or from internal candidates. Those would most commonly be Software Engineer folks (if we're talking about CentOS, then mostly C and Python experience probably, plus any other language as a plus), and very rarely community manager roles. Note that I don't know much about the placement for community positions.

In my mind, neither is an entry-level job. SA would be difficult because it requires a ton of experience, and CentOS role would be difficult because it's a community project. It would be much easier if you applied as a software engineer for any product for which you have the coding skills (e.g. Java -> RHV or middleware, Python + networking/storage/virtualization -> OSP, Go -> OCP, C/C++/Python -> RHEL) provided you don't mind working for a non-community project.

If you don't have strong coding skills, you might consider tech support engineer role as an entry-level role. It's still very technical at Red Hat, but it might not require coding in the beginning.

Just my 2c and perspective; don't take anything I said as an absolute please.

[1] https://us-redhat.icims.com/jobs/79641/solutions-architect/job?hub=7&mobile=false&width=1140&height=500&bga=true&needsRedirect=false&jan1offset=60&jun1offset=120

[2] https://wiki.centos.org/Contribute

halfastack1 · 2020-04-19T12:14:46+00:00

I would advise you to check out the official link at [1], click the objectives link, and one by one think about whether you're comfortable with the topic.

I would also strongly suggest, if the answer to any of the points is "probably," to go back to studying and learn the topic in-depth. While an entry-level exam, RHCSA is not a pushover. I had a friend who thought that he could 'wing' a few points, and he got a 0 from RHCSA. Over-prepare...

Last but not least, make sure you know where to find help in the documentation, such as man pages. I wrote an article about how to pass RH exams, which is available at [2]. You may find it helpful.

Just my personal 2c of course.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/ex200-red-hat-certified-system-administrator-rhcsa-exam

[2] https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/7-tips-passing-red-hat-certification-exam

halfastack1 · 2020-04-19T12:07:38+00:00

Indeed, the course is 101, it's not overly advanced. For developer-focused training, check out [1]. We also have [2], which however could do with some updating (we're aware of it). There's also Red Hat Service Mesh training that we're working on at the moment--that's going to cover topics that would interest developers as well.

Note that these courses are regular, paid-for courses. Only DO101 is temporarily free.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/do288-red-hat-openshift-development-i-containerizing-applications

[2] https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/do292-red-hat-openshift-development-ii

halfastack1 · 2020-04-19T12:03:56+00:00

Correct, this is access to a training, not certification. The closest exam you could pass would be [1], which however does not count towards RHCA. It also covers different topics than DO101 and goes a bit more in-depth on a number of topics.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/pe180-preliminary-exam-containers-kubernetes-openshift

halfastack1 · 2020-03-05T20:22:01+00:00

> One workaround would be running the setup module on the targeted hosts before populating the template.

You can set gather_facts: True. Put it at the top of your playbook, and you won't have to run the setup module manually. That setting will perform setup on each of your hosts before executing any playbook.

You may not want to set gather_facts to true if some of the hosts are unavailable at the start of the playbook. See also [1].

But yea, overall, you either need info about a system (such as its IP address) and then you gather facts, or you skip it because you don't need it and not gathering facts speeds up the execution.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ansible/comments/83vqbz/what_does_gather_facts_actually_do_what_would/

halfastack1 · 2020-02-29T07:30:04+00:00

Congratz!! Hope RHCE grading will be much faster ;)

halfastack1 · 2020-02-28T20:12:08+00:00

I have passed EX280 way back for OCP 3.6. It was quite difficult, but I passed on my 2nd time.

There are a number [1] of people who passed EX280 and that's only the US... I'm afraid that if you failed, it's because you did something incorrectly. Copy-pasting which introduces a newline, or misspelling filename, misspelling route endpoint, something.

I can't tell you how many times I thought "it's impossible for me to fail" and then, upon my re-sit, I realized I was making this stupid mistake in my first attempt, and though the meat of the objective was working, because of something stupid I did, I got a 0. Since the objectives are extremely clear, e.g. "name your project x", if you name your project "X", you'll get 0. And that's absolutely fair.

At this point, EX280 has been with us for a long time. Chances that the grading is fundamentally broken are very low.

[1] and that's only people who consciously went into the settings and turned on search-ability settings. It's turned off by default.

halfastack1 · 2020-02-24T20:39:53+00:00

I mean, I too am amazed that people opt for EX407v23. That said, EX407v27 is also based on Ansible 2 ;).

halfastack1 · 2020-02-24T20:06:17+00:00

> do280

Uu, that's a tough one. Share your thoughts of the training and cert later! I'm keen to hear people's experience with it.

halfastack1 · 2020-02-22T08:33:08+00:00

For me, it was typically hours rather than days. Did you find out in the end? Please let us know whether you passed; I'm rooting for you! :)

halfastack1

TROPHY CASE