Monday, November 28, 2011

About the RHCSA certification

From time to time there are people that ask me how I got the OCP certification and I regret not having posted about it, therefore now that I'm a shiny, brand-new Red Hat Certified System Administrator I would like to write about this.

First of all, this is a practical exam so if you enjoy taking multiple choice quizzes this is not the case. You can check all the information about this test in the Red Hat Certified System Administrator page. Something worth of reading it is the RHCSA Exam Objectives page, mandatory if you choose to take the test without enrolling into Red Hat recommended courses. By the way, if you are unsure if you have the level required for passing the test without enrolling into a course, it would be a good idea to take the pre-assessment quiz; you have to fill in a form with personal information in order to take the quiz, but if you take the certification test you'll have to give it anyway.

I prefer a lot to study a book and practice with my home computers, and for this test I studied the RHCE Red Hat Certified Engineer Linux Study Guide, by Michael Jang. Talking about other certification book, I read some time ago a review that blasted that book because there were some things that weren't covered in the book that were in the test, and unfortunately this is the case for this book too. But taking into account that no book can just put the exact test with its answers and that at this time I don't know a guide for studying for the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 exams, I think that Jang's book is a good one for preparing for the RHCSA exam. I recommend reading the whole book and PRACTICING its exercises, even if this book is intended to be a guide for the (now obsolete) RHCT and RHCE exams; if you study the RHCE part you'll be a lot more confident while taking the test than if you just study the RHCT part.

Finally, as any good certification test, it's aimed to check your skills and knowledge about a concrete field, therefore having experience in this topics will help a lot and would be decisive in passing the test; if you don't have experience in some topics try at lest to practice it a lot before taking the test.

I think that holding a certification is a good way to back your skills and studying for the test is a good opportunity to keep up to date your knowledge, therefore I wish good luck for everybody that decide to take the RHCSA test.

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