Offtopic - My road to RHCA in 2021

I've started my RHCA journey at the start of August 2021 using the RHLS pretty much exclusively to study. I've had prior knowledge with almost all products that I took the certification for which definitely helped a lot.

Some stats:

Started at: 02 August 2021

Finished on: 22 October 2021

Time spent in labs: 142 hours

Time spent learning: about two thirds of the time I spent in labs

Exams:

EX318 - Virtualization (300/300)

EX436 - HA Clustering (269/300)

EX403 - Satellite 6 (300/300)

EX447 - Advanced Ansible (253/300)

EX362 - Identity Management (233/300)

EX318

I prepared for EX318 for around 2 weeks while working normally on my day job. The labs provided by Red Hat and Exam itself were very clear on the instructions and tasks that need to be done. If you have the opportunity, set a cluster up yourself from scratch in VMs since this will make you aware of what needs to be done on the infrastructure side to get up and running.

EX436

I've spent 2.5 weeks preparing for the exam while working as usual. The time given for the exam is very generous with 3 hours in my opinion. The instructions and tasks were mostly pretty clear on what you are supposed to do and the labs provided by Red Hat are sufficient enough in my opinion.

EX403

Due to a few projects at work, I was studying for around 2.5 Weeks for this one. The labs were pretty good and gave some nice insights into the inner workings of foreman+katello (satellite). Overall I found the course material to go rather deep into specific topics which is not necessarily a bad thing but can be overwhelming when reading through the first time.

EX447

After preparing for around 2 weeks for it and passing the exam, I honestly have mixed feelings about this one. I think it gives quite a bit of insight into filters, plugins, and ansible tower. However, I think the preparation this course (do447) provides is rather mediocre for the ansible tasks excluding tower since I think that part is well covered. Would I choose this one again? Eh, probably not.

EX362

I've got to admit that I was rushing this exam a bit but in the end it all worked out ... even if my score was not as high as I had hoped. Anyway, about the exam ... I think the exam itself was better than the course since the course materials are quite old at this point (freeipa 4.5 and rhel 7.4). The labs provided by Red Hat are a bit weird and I found the overall experience to be about on par with EX447.

With all that said I learned quite a few new things and methods to get stuff done.

Would I do it again?

Yes, but I'd change EX362 and maybe EX447 with some other exams.

What's next?

Taking a break until january 2022 :)

Comments

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