What is on Your Mind?

I have just been on RedHat SA 3 training course (4 days) and sat exams EX200 (RHCSA) and EX300 (RHCE)

The daft thing was that politics meant I wasn't allowed to take courses SA 1 or 2. So I learnt about stuff I would never use (SELinux; iSCSI; NFS Kerberos encrypted with user specific access rules etc.) and then took the exams.

Somehow I passed RHCSA for the course I didn't do, even though I didn't know a few big chunks so would score zero for those sections. Sadly I failed on RHCE because there's too much to remember about irrelevant stuff that I would never dream of using and it all seems a bit over contrived.


Given that the exams marks if you can pass the exam rather than how you perform in a real job, what do people think of it's value? It might look good to management and help get an interview, but as someone not looking to move, ........ ?



Just wondering,
Robin

Hi Robin,
I never had the chance to take an exam as if I were it would be on my spare time and money ( I dont have as kids cost a lot our days...) The only exams I passed were for my diploma and then I was student without a Job ( but hoping with a Federal IT diploma I would then find easily...)
IMHO certification is a must for someone beginning in IT or for a junior wishing to escape his present situation for better, but for someone that is not in services ( lients want to see you have the latest...) you know like me the content reflect only partially the real IT world.. and so we have knowledge that cant be learned and a lot of what you learn there is of no use for our Dept...
So I can only agree with you...

Best regards
Vic

I got the RHCE for RHEL 6 a few years ago and remember it being full of useless guff, such as configuring SAMBA users as well as users for other services, as well as iSCSI, etc. that you mention, none of which I've ever used (so, of course, have forgotten - it's hard to commit such rubbish to memory!).

And, while I've studied for the RHEL 7 RHCE haven't taken the exam yet, because it's expensive and full of much the same useless stuff.

It's probably good to learn a lot of the other, more useful stuff, just for your own knowledge, but I really don't think it's worth the effort, time or money to do all that's necessary for the exam (unless someone else is paying for it).

Probably looks good on the CV, but that's about it, IMO.

Hello rbatte1,

I NEVER discourage anyone from doing learning(by any good way). Personally I believe in this:
Thanks,
R. Singh

All depends on your customers.
Your current customers recognize your reputation gained in your past work - but what about new customers?
An objective and comparible certification in your CV puts you first.

It's becoming harder and harder to have "general" knowledge about Linux as distros become more specialized, Windows-like, and sundered from each other.

They do look good, but the quality really depends of the person effort later on.

If you just take class, followed by exam (full of useless stuff as you folks say)
and never use the knowledge, it is useless and will vaporize over time.

Of course, good things can be heard from a great teacher.
But they are not always so great..

You mentioned kerberized nfs, iscsi, selinux.
Those are actually great techs and great to know.
The world will insist more on those things as time progresses.

As for ISCSI, i find it a great cheap learning/education tool for virtual clusters on work/home PC for disk backend.

Regards
Peasant.