Chapter 26. Final Preparation
Congratulations! You made it through the book, and now it’s time to finish getting ready for the RHCSA exam. This chapter helps you get ready to take and pass the exam. In this chapter, you learn more about the exam process and how to register for the exam. You also get some useful tips that will help you avoid some common pitfalls while taking the exam.
General Tips
In this section, you get some general tips about the exam. You learn how to verify your exam readiness, how to register for the exam, and what to do on the exam.
Verifying Your Readiness
Only register for the exam when you think that you are ready to pass it. This book contains a lot of material to help you verify your exam readiness. To start with, you should be able to answer all the “Do I Know This Already?” quiz questions, which you find at the beginning of each chapter. You should also have completed all the exercises in the chapters successfully, as well as the end-of-chapter labs. The labs are the first real way of testing your readiness because the questions are formulated similarly to the real exam questions, providing a good way to gauge whether you are ready for the exam.
Registering for the Exam
There are two ways of taking the RHCSA exam. You can take it either as a classroom exam or as a kiosk exam. The classroom exam is typically on Friday only, and it is offered primarily by Red Hat to provide an exam at the end of a course. Therefore, most of the people who are with you in the exam classroom have taken 4 days of course training before taking the exam, and for that reason, classroom exam availability is limited.
For a long time, the classroom exam was the only way to take the exam. For some time now, Red Hat has provided kiosk exams, too. Unlike a classroom exam, a kiosk exam is administered on an individual basis, where you work through the exam tasks on a kiosk computer. This is a monitored computer that is in a booth in an exam center, where you are monitored through multiple cameras while working on the exam tasks. The good thing about a kiosk exam is that you schedule the exam for a time and place that is convenient for your schedule.
You can register to take the exam either through Redhat.com (following the links under the Services & support tab) or through a training company. Either way, you take the same exam. It might be easier, though, to get a discount by booking through a local training company. Booking through Red Hat will be faster normally, as you have direct access to Red Hat.
If you book a classroom exam, you get an invitation for the time and date the exam is scheduled. If you book a kiosk exam, you get a voucher code that you can use to choose the exam venue, time, and date.
On Exam Day
Make sure to bring appropriate identification to the exam. To be allowed to take the exam, you need an approved government ID. Normally, a passport or driver’s license will do; other types of proof may be accepted in your country as well. Do not forget it; without ID, you will not be allowed to take the exam.
Also, make sure you are on time. It is a good idea to arrive 30 minutes before the exam’s scheduled starting time. If you are late, you will normally be allowed to sit for the exam, but you will not get extra time. So, just make sure that you are on time.
After proving your identity, you are introduced to the exam environment. Because of the nondisclosure agreement that every test-taker signs with Red Hat, I cannot tell you in detail what the exam environment looks like. I can tell you, though, that there will be an environment that consists of one or more servers. There is also a list of tasks that have to be performed. Work your way through the tasks, reading all carefully and thoroughly, and you will pass the exam if you have prepared well.
During the Exam
The tasks that you have to work on during the exam are not necessarily presented in the most logical order. Therefore, it is a good idea to start reading through all the tasks before you start working on the first assignment. While reading through all the tasks, you can decide which is the best order to create the configurations needed. Determine the best possible order for yourself, because it may not be obvious.
You have 2 hours and 30 minutes to work through all the exam assignments. Expect about 17 assignments; you might see a bit more or less.
Another very important tip is to read carefully, a skill that not many people have been taught well. IT administrators are very skilled in scanning web pages to retrieve the information that they need. That skill will not help you on the exam. Reading skills do. I cannot stress that enough. I estimate that 40% of all people who fail the exam do so because they do not read the exam questions carefully. ( They scan instead.) So, let me give you some tips on how to read the exam questions:
If English is not your native language, you can switch the language that questions are presented in. Maybe the English-language question is not clear to you, but the question translated in another language is. So, if in doubt, read the translation as well.
Because the questions are originally written in English—the default language and the preference of most exam candidates—they tend to be perfect in that form, because Red Hat applies a tremendous effort to make them perfect. Red Hat must rely on translators to ensure the questions are translated correctly, so the quality of the English-language questions is the best. You are free to use translated questions, but you should use the English-language questions as your primary source.
To make sure that you do not miss anything, make a task list for each question. You have scratch paper with you during the exam. Use it to make a short list of tasks that you have to accomplish, and work on them one by one. This approach helps you concentrate on what the exam question is actually asking.
After you have worked on all assignments, go have a cup of coffee. (You are allowed to take a break during the exam.) When you return, read all questions again to make sure that you did not miss anything. Taking a small break is important; it allows you to distance yourself from the exam, after which you should read the questions as if it is the first time that you have seen them.
Another important part of the exam is the order in which you work on the assignments. Regardless of the specific exam content, some topics need to be addressed before other topics. Make sure that you deal with those topics first. If you do not, it will make it more difficult or impossible to complete the other assignments. Roughly speaking, here is the order in which you should work on the exam topics:
Make sure that your server boots and you have root access to it.
Configure networking in the way it is supposed to work.
Configure any repositories that you need.
Install and enable all services that need to be up and running at the end of the exam.
Work on all storage-related tasks.
Create all required user and group accounts.
Set permissions.
Make sure SELinux is working and configured as required.
Work on everything else.
The third thing that you need to know about the exam is that you should reboot at least a couple of times. A successful reboot allows you to verify that everything is working up to the moment you have rebooted. Before rebooting, it is a good idea to remove the rhgb and quiet options from the GRUB boot loader. Removing them allows you to see what actually happens and makes troubleshooting a lot easier.
Do not reboot only at the end of the exam, because if at that moment you encounter an issue, you might not have enough time to fix it. You should at least make sure to reboot after working on all storage-related assignments.
The Nondisclosure Agreement
The RHCSA certification is the most sought-after certification that currently exists in IT. It represents a real value because it demonstrates that the person who has passed the RHCSA exam is able to work through a list of realistic assignments and complete the job successfully. It is in everybody’s interest to help maintain this high value of the RHCSA certification. The nondisclosure agreement (NDA) is an important part of that.
The RHCSA exam requires demonstrating real skills because the content of the exam is not publicly available. Please help keep these exams valuable by not talking about questions that you have seen on the exam. Anyone who knows before the exam which questions will be asked will have an easier exam than you had, which means that the value of the certification will diminish and will make your effort less valuable. So, please help protect what you have worked so hard for and do not talk about exam content to anyone.
Also, you should realize that there is a penalty for disclosing exam questions after you have signed the NDA. You will lose your certification if you have passed the exam, or you will become barred from retaking it if you did not pass.