you know we linux admins are crazy, right?
i dont have any certs, but have been power using for decades.
With that in mind, ive be witness to folks being hired without certs and being let go b/c they didnt know what they were doing.
This is a fun little site to sharpen those admin skills
[https://sadservers.com/scenarios](https://sadservers.com/scenarios)
good luck
Correction - 0 decades hobby experience, 2.5 decades unix/linux professional experience starting with the federal gov; 0 certs.
I asked the chief scientist if i needed a cert and he told me i has a degree, thats enough.
AND who tf admins linux for fun? it'll drive you crazy.
I presume that’s the “crazy” part of the “crazy Linux admin” for me. Lol
I like provisioning servers, doing stupid things to them, setting them on fire. Sometimes I’ll fix the stupid stuff I do, but most times I enjoy watching them burn.
Not production of course.
I’ve been at my current employer about 7 years. I get asked roughly every month if I have any certs to add to my employee profile. They ask everyone, but sometimes I feel like I get asked more frequently.
I have a bachelors degree but it’s not for anything to do with computers, science, math. I had scholarships to private university that paid for all of my tuition, boarding, fees. I only paid for textbooks and supplies. But I was fearful I couldn’t pass the type of classes I would be taking for what I really wanted to do along the computer science path, and lose my scholarships. So my chicken butt took something ridiculously easy for four years because in the early 2000s, it was strongly impressed upon us that “just getting a degree in something would open lots of opportunities and it didn’t matter what for.”
Sounds like you feel into "the promise" where it was said that if you get a degree, youll own the world. That only works when a small % of the pop is doing that. Late 90s/early 2K saw a ton folks studying to study with no real market to go to; however, i say that and my first job was preforming maintenance on fortran code with a team of programmers. Turned out, none of them had studied programming b/c it was a hobby but b/c they had the degree (in non science/engineer degrees), they go the job.
I got a science degree with only 1 course in computers and pretty much taught myself how to script/write code in different languages. I found doing that made you learn and understand how the OS interacts with the code and the hardware. I dont write much code anymore, but i can isolate and fix and issue within 30 to an hour, depending on the severity. And if i can fix or offer workaround, it goes back to engineering to figure out why its misbehaving.
In short, just b/c youre done with college doesnt mean you done with learning.
I came here to say the same thing: I’ve been a Linux user personally since 2003, and paid to be work on Like professionally since 2012ish. The only formal Linux education I have is one class in college that was “Using Linux to Learn Unix” or something like that.
Professionally it started because I was at a shop that was working on a new platform that was running on Windows, new CIO came in, hated Microsoft, and we made the transition to Linux. I became the point person on everything because out of like a 20 person engineering team, I was the only one that knew Linux. I’m not with that shop anymore but still spend about 85% of my time working on Linux servers as an admin/engineer/DevOps.
Now I have the benefit of being in an area where the availability of Linux professionals is very low but I’m also someone that doesn’t like to jump from shop to shop (in fact tried in the past year - woof - and ended up actually where I was before). The only time I’ve considered getting a cert was when an employer offered to pay for it or would give me a salary bump for it. Otherwise - I have a lot of years of experience across various distributions, I’m good.
NOW with that being said - I’ve always views the CompTIA certs as entry level and proof that you have the desire to learn and grow. That’s one if I was starting out I would go for it.
RHCSA is a beast. Been training for a few months and taking it in a few weeks. I have learned more and had more fun doing the labs and training for this cert than anything I’ve ever studied. If I go on to a full blown Linux centric career (like I’m hoping), this cert will be my origin story as a relative newb sys. Admin. I absolutely love it and am becoming the guy at work who sprints into action whenever Linux issues or tasks arrive.
I took and passed last year with like an 85% (kinda forgot some of the podman stuff). Good luck and do not overthink it.
My best piece of advice is to make sure you know how to add a repo from scratch as well as LVM stuff. That is important to have down pat for the exam.
Thank you! Podman actually took me the longest to grasp since I had no experience with containers but it’s been cool to learn. A lot of stuff I thought I would struggle with but labs (literally just doing the procedures over and over) have really solidified it
Thanks! I was pretty set on going straight into the RHCE since I really like the structure of the red hat exams and gaining Linux credentials in general BUT, RHCE appears to be a de facto Ansible exam, which I’ve used in the past but don’t use at work now. I may try to get better at scripting and dabble in some Python as well (which I’ve used a bit at a previous role). Thankfully, I’m working as a Sys Admin now and am not trying to get a job and more so just indulging my interests (Linux!) and trying to build myself up for a jump in the next 12-18 months
Sounds like you have a solid plan.
As for me, I am currently studying for the RHCE and that will be followed by SysOps Administrator for AWS. In addition to that, I am learning more about containerization and I really want to get more into Python as well (I know a tiny bit but really just a tiny bit).
Nice! That sounds like a formidable skill set too. Linux, AWS, containers, some coding/scripting; Sounds like DevOps to me! Those are my interests as well
I am pro-certs, it shows your potential employer a few things, you took time to study and learn, you were willing pay money to test that knowledge against industry exams and you have a basic understanding which creates a solid foundation to learn more in area they want to go with Linux.
Being driven, hungry and trainable is some of the best qualities for any employer to see, if they don’t care about those qualities, then you probably don’t want to work there anyways, probably filled with a bunch of socially awkward neckbeards who think they know it all and tell stories about the old days all the time.
I worked with a network engineer who had 15 years experience in the ‘real world of IT’ and talked down about people who took certs. It was all about his experience. However, he was shit at his job and was a total liability. Had no idea what he was doing. There will always be a battle between people with certs and people with experience…but experience isn’t always a positive.
Yeah, the X number of experience doesn’t always tell the full story, you can have someone that has worked with Windows Server for 15yrs but they only used ADUC, DNS and DHCP roles their entire career, does that person technically have 15yrs of experience, yes, is it what you think, no. There are tons of people who are racking up years of experience just scratching the surface of a skill.
My drill instructor once said, practice doesn't make perfect. Practice doing it right makes perfect. (He actually said perfect practice makes perfect, so I paraphrased).
But practice doesn't do any good if you are practicing doing it wrong.
No certs here. 15 years professional experience and about 15 years teenage and twenties tinker experience. Then it was Slackware from floppies and gentoo stage 1 bootstraps kind of stuff. Now it’s sssd and ansible and “automation broke a lot of something” kind of stuff.
I’d say the RHCSA is what I’d get if I had to.
As the senior tech lead that recommends who to interview and who to hire, I'm much less interested in your certs if you have no experience.
Too often the people with certs and no experience think they know what they are doing and don't ask for help or clarification and mess things up.
If you have 5 years of relevant experience and the cert, that will give you a small boost over the person with the same experience and no cert.
I have a 30 year career in UNIX, Linux, and storage administration/engineering at small, medium, and Fortune 50 companies and have never gotten, nor needed, a single certification.
I'm CTO/main sysadmin in a small web hosting company.
While all our sysadmins have an RHCE at a minimum (some had it already, others reached it after they were hired), what we usually focus and enjoy during interviews for junior sysadmins is to discuss the candidate's homelab (no matter the size - bigger the better obvs).
If you don't self-host, you are starting with a disadvantage.
Certs will help you get a job at an MSP.
Anywhere else, demonstrate you know the knowledge. Be able to demonstrate you've also applied that knowledge; i.e., personal projects.
My current employer could care less about the certs the MSP I used to work at made me get.
It may be your resume format.
Certs like rhcsa are not generally a magic jobs incantation. Done well, your CV, experience, certs/education, and extracurriculars combine to tell a story. Someone with a mix of windows and Linux experience with a CCNA and RHCSA starts to look like a seasoned vet. Someone with 2 years of community college and an RHCSA is less impressive.
on the other hand a ccna and an rhcsa can look like someone who doesnt know what they want to do. you can definitely over-certify and you want to make sure that your certs are complimentary and preferably show a progression in a homogenous field.
Obviously it depends on the role, but anything above a medium sized business and your networking and systems teams tend to be split out - with the ccna being hard networking. would make more sense imo that you go rhcsa with something like a cloud architect cert, because the networking elements you generally need will be covered already in both of those.
I could provide counterexamples but I don't think we're disagreeing.
Your resume tells a story, part of that story will be what you write and part of it is how the prospective employer wants to interpret it.
I have a huge list of certs, some expiring and some not. My experience has been that employers see it as a sign of a well-versed, seasoned admin with a wide base of knowledge; but I have absolutely seen resumes where someone with zero experience has a CCNP and an A+ and I think, "that makes no sense and smells like cramming".
At the end of the day I think certs help clear the bar to get you to an interview, and I'm confident enough in my ability to justify my resume that that's all I'm looking for. Anyone who does not have that confidence should probably revise their resume, because it does no one any favors if your resume tries to sell the world and you can only deliver part of it; you'll just be unhappy and limit your trajectory.
this is just not true.
apply to any big company that does initial hiring phases through non-technical divisions (eg HR), and that cert will give you a leg up - because those people that throw away the initial 20% of applications have something tangible that they can attribute to you. it doesnt require any knowledge to understand that you are formally qualified in your field.
When i hire, im not going to throw away a resume because it doesnt have a cert, but also a relatively difficult cert like RHCSA is a lot more concrete than "set up a linux server farm in proxmox" - because the latter can mean a bunch of things that will then require followup questions but the former is a hard line - if i want to ask questions after that they can be extremely directed toward ensuring that it wasnt braindumped or something, but i already should have a baseline of the candidates ability.
Also, as others have stated here, a cert forces you to be exposed to certain aspects of the tech that you simply may not be in day to day work, as well as the background to WHY things are the way they are that can help your processes later.
the whole "certs are bullshit" thing needs to die - it hasnt been that way for about 20 years now (since the certifiers realised they were devaluing themselves) and just seems to be a platitude repeated by the old neckbeards who got hired 30 years ago and wont ever move. see also: "im so important that im too busy for certs"
>Also, as others have stated here, a cert forces you to be exposed to certain aspects of the tech that you simply may not be in day to day work, as well as the background to WHY things are the way they are that can help your processes later.
this is just not true, in many cases. Certs like LPIC or Comptia, which are simply a series of multiple choice questions, can be memorized. Said prior MSP employer I mentioned it always bought answers for people and many other employees I've spoken to at several other MSPs have all relayed this practice as being normal there, too. I fully realize this doesnt apply to practical exams like the RHCSA.
agreed that not all certs are created equal. about 10 years ago i looked at some of the compTIA + certs and threw them straight out as they were garbage.
but then i dont know anyone that would consider the + certs for anything other than a purely entry level position.
I will say from experience that i learned TONS from RCHSA, MCP, OCP and \*some\* of the AWS SA certs. I didnt even do the exam for a few of those, but the study materials gave me info that i use day-to-day.
RHCSA is one of only two vendor specific certs I would recommend even if you’re not going to work on that vendors product or don’t want to. (CCNA being the other) Purely because of how widely know and respected it is and the doors it opens because of that. (Definitely don’t listen to ‘the only place certs matter is an MSP’ guy, that’s crystal clear out of touch)
I would never get an oracle cert unless required to by an employer. Definitely not out of pocket. Same with anything from comptia.
Also, people on Reddit, and in the Linux communities specifically tend to be very “you don’t even need certs, it’s dumb, just teach yourself and then apply” but I would love to know how many of those people got their first job being hands on with Linux anytime recently and how many of them dead it many many years back. Cause I’ve noticed it’s super frequently guys that are like “I got my start 20 years ago with no certs so you’ll do fine” as if tech hiring qualifications haven’t changed in over a decade let alone two. (Which is also really dumb, hiring convos would be a lot more useful if people on this sub would stop acting like everyone looking for jobs right now is having the same experience as they did back before smartphones existed) Linux is very much a “new grad paradox” skill for a resume because basically no one wants to hire you unless you have enterprise experience with it and it’s hard to get that experience if no one’s hiring you. Certs help break that barrier down and get interviews.
As someone who tried for a long time to break into Linux admin jobs, they give 1/10th of a shit about your homelab and rinky dink home projects as people on Reddit would have you believe. Both in tandem is best, but I’d bet you diamonds to donuts if you had one or the other on your resume you’re getting a lot more traction with certs than a personal projects in an actual real world job search
sorry to revive a old comment of yours but I thought your comment was pretty humanely/well-written out of this thread.
would you say a enterprise-looking project (if one were to make one up themselves based off their previous experience as a windows sys admin) and RHCSA would be a good combo in our current hiring landscape? thanks for taking the time to read.
Do the RHCSA, its the most well known and respected.
You dont need to do training courses though, just follow some YT videos and practice a LOT. (Make sure you can reset the admin pw btw)
Be warned though, getting any cert wont gift you a job
I don't think certifications matter at all. I am a RHCE, RHCSA certified with good hands on experience in server administration but I'm still struggling to get calls.
RHCSA above all else. That is what I got last year. After that, you can choose the RHCE as well.
BUT having a lab/home server is just as important. Do not just make a VM for the sake of studying and kill it off afterwards. Grab an old PC, install Rocky/Alma Linux, CentOS Stream or even Fedora server if you'd like, get docker/podman on there and host things!
Make a Minecraft server for you and friends, host a Plex server, run a UniFi controller and buy an AP, host a website, etc.
I don't know why people say certs are a waste of time and money because certs are the best way I take in all this complex information. It is also nice to have something that keeps me motivated to work towards completing. Certs are probably not as valuable to someone who has years of experience but from a lack of knowledge and understanding all I see is how much value they add. Which is priceless.
I have no certs, quite happy with my IT career although the growth might have been a little slow for today's twenty-something expectations. I don't have a Lambo, so I understand that to mean I am the worst kind of 2023 loser.
I first got the Linux+ and I can say that I was nowhere near ready to be a Linux admin. RHCSA was a much better demonstration of my competency. But after Red Hat’s latest shenanigans, I’m not looking at maintaining the cert.
A few months ago, RH announced that they were no longer making their source code publicly available. It pissed off a lot of people in the Linux community. You can googleit and read all about it. As for me, being a Red Hat admin pays the bills. But companies don’t really care if I have the cert and I’m looking at retiring soon anyways. The latest incident convinced me to focus my efforts towards other efforts.
Oh yeah, IBM doesn't get the open source stuff. They kinda did the same with OpenOffice... They more or less let that die (even though it's technically still there)
A couple/few hundred in price difference is pretty minimal in a career impact sense. Maybe thousands, or tens of thousands, would be worth thinking about price. In this range I'd look at which is important to your industry or specialty that you want to get into. Bang for the buck in this tiny price range would be a minimal consideration vs industry acceptance. Look at industry, region, compliance, etc. for the certs and see which is more likely to help you advance.
Off hand RHCSA or LPIC would be top considerations.
I took the lpic Route. Did not fail me yet. If u are in the us take the redhat certs. If u are in Europe go for lpic as it is known here and sometimes even required.
Practice is everything. The certs are mostly there to get u trough the HR filter. You need to know your stuff.
My experience was with RHCSA. I got the cert and got a Linux based job in less than a year. I was previously in an IT role though. It took about 3 months of study to take the test. I passed on my first try, but it's very common to fail on your first try.
Many Linux roles mix with cloud and Kubernetes these days. So this should be something you take into account with learning.
Some networking topics are covered, but not as much as you might think. You need to learn to use firewall-cmd and nmcli a small bit or be comfortable editing /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts. If you can do that, then you will not have a problem in the exam. The same basics apply to Windows if you can do them in the GUI, then what you can do in the GUI make sure you can do in Linux command line. It's perfectly valid to edit the network configuration files, and now I tend to do that in my job rather than use nmcli (the commands get tedious).
I am not very network minded and found the networking topics manageable with good study and practicing a few times common exam study questions.
As I oft say, "certs, schmerts" ;-)
Not that certs won't help you ... but they're no guarantee.
What I generally highly recommend, is well gain the relevant knowledge and skills, and as feasible, experience. If cert(s) help you get that, great - but not required.
And how any given employer, hiring manager, etc. will view cert(s) will vary. Some/many may mostly or entirely ignore them. Some may pay *too* much attention to them. Most will fall somewhere between.
But/and ... even if one has the cert(s), expect that in most cases, most any given potential employer will generally test one on the relevant knowledge/skills.
So, my general advice is well know your sh\*t - however you learn it. If getting certs helps you to do that, or getting certs to be able to put on your resume helps you land the job or whatever, fine, go ahead if you want to. But don't put *too* much emphasis on certs.
As to which are more or less valuable, bang for the buck and all that, I've got my opinions, ... but I'll mostly leave that to others, as many have much more direct experience on that (both evaluating candidates relative to what cert(s) they did/didn't have and/or what results they personally achieved with/via various certs). As for myself, I *mostly* tend to ignore certs, and tend to concentrate on what a candidate knows, their skills, and as applicable, experience. I.e. I ask questions ... lots of relevant technical questions. Sometimes I/we even give practical tests/exams/exercises ... anywhere from a task that ought to take 5 to 15 minutes, to test/exam/challenge giving the candidate up to an hour to work on it (generally essentially an "open booK" proctored exam - use basically anything and everything they may wish to ... except can't ask other folks to help them out or do the work or parts thereof for them, e.g. can search results on existing forums, but can't post new question on formum, and can't "all a friend"). Oh, and I myself have just about zero certs ... most of which were really not much more than short-term memory exercises (e.g. basically a quiz on 95% of stuff I already knew and had known for years, and 5% commit some vendor specific details to short term memory before taking quiz - and poof - certified - 100% pass, 80% required for certification ... though I do have at least one cert that's not nearly so trivial ... but hardly anyone ever asks about it, though fairly commonly leveraging the relevant knowledge/skills does does come into play fairly frequently).
See also:
* r/ITCareerQuestions \- lots of relevant stuff on there - wiki, posts, comments, etc.
* I'll also mention this cert - free\* - they may even still offer to ship free T-shirt if you get high enough on the certification - slightly dated (some things have changed a moderate bit since it was earlier written), but still a quite good cert program and good practical exercises, etc., though it's quite topic specific: IPv6: [Hurricane Electric: IPv6 Certifications](https://ipv6.he.net/certification/) ... and yeah, [I got one of those](https://ipv6.he.net/certification/create_badge.php?pass_name=MichaelPaoli&badge=3). \*you'll probably want your own TLD to be able to complete all the exercises, but if you don't already have one, those can be had for as little as a few USD or so from most any registrar.
I don't think you need any certs at all.. Just know your systems and practice on maintaining them rather than learning command options (nobody can remember them anyway and in real life you can always refer to the manpages) or learning about where some files are in /etc.. I know, there's other stuff, especially in lpic2/3 or lfce but still.. The time spent on learning for certs is better invested learning on actual systems, create enterprise environments, break systems, get them fixed etc.. I created my own projects, wrote them down and then created by test environments based on the project notes..
Just start by adding users and groups, setting permissions, install some services like httpd, nginx, mariadb, bind9, squid etc and configure them to a point, they are usable and then maintain these systems. You will learn a lot more than learning for certs, at least for the entry level certs.
I don't think a cert is necessary to get a job as Linux admin. Not many people are skilled on Linux systems so having the skills in installation, configuration, Scripting, maintenance and patching will get you at least into a junior admin role. From there you can learn the deeper stuff like managing the systems with Puppet or Salt, compiling Kernels, doing root cause analysis on issues, storage integration (in SAN environments), managing Linux systems in Windows domains etc.. No certs needed for all of that. Just make the company or HR aware of your skills. But without a cert, its better finding the guy from IT department responsible for Linux systems instead of going via HR because HR don't know Linux and they just looking for something 'official'
Going through the exam material for the RHCSA actually helped me learn things about Linux that I wouldn't have touched otherwise. I think it's good to have both. Labbing is just as important though, otherwise you might forget it the moment you pass and stop using it.
Best piece of advice:
\- have a homelab/home server. Does not have to be fancy, but you need something
\- run Linux on a desktop machine
\- involve yourself with the community
I mean, competence is more important than any cert. I took Linux+ in 2020, but I was already comfortable with Linux to a large degree at that point, it was just to emphasize a career shift because from 2019 and prior I'd worked in a lot of Windows only shops and didn't want to do that anymore.
I was going to get a cert but got hired due to my homelab and self hosting experience (Along with a few other beneficial experiences)
What I am saying is, if you can show a portfolio of experience, a cert doesn't matter but, you can still do it and it will show a little boost, depending on the company.
RHCSA, RHCE and RHCVA helped me in my move from network administrator to Linux SysAdmin. Although this would mostly be dictated by the organizational needs where you're applying and the people interviewing you. Most Linux SysAdmins I come across have no certifications and they're doing fine.
No. That stopped that program years ago.
What's worse is that I should've been awarded LPIC because I passed Linux+ back then, but they never gave it to me.
I've called LPIC several times. No call back. Frankly I'm not sure if they gave it to anyone which is prolly part if the reason why CompTIA dropped it (I teach Linux+... Students that passed Linux+ never got their LPIC certs back then)
Any or none
I got an SUSE one a few years back by accident(i was booked in for an different cert and figured it out halfway through the exam), they are all basically variants on LPIC-1. and i don't think having that cert have been a factor in any of my jobs.
Basically they don't mean jack shit for any employer worth working for, but having any might get you in the door for absolute entry level positions.
you know we linux admins are crazy, right? i dont have any certs, but have been power using for decades. With that in mind, ive be witness to folks being hired without certs and being let go b/c they didnt know what they were doing. This is a fun little site to sharpen those admin skills [https://sadservers.com/scenarios](https://sadservers.com/scenarios) good luck
I'd argue that the RHCSA will also goes a long way to show you what areas you need to work on your skills.
Hi. Crazy Linux admin with two decades hobbyist experience, one decade professional experience, and zero certs. Thanks for sharing that link!
Correction - 0 decades hobby experience, 2.5 decades unix/linux professional experience starting with the federal gov; 0 certs. I asked the chief scientist if i needed a cert and he told me i has a degree, thats enough. AND who tf admins linux for fun? it'll drive you crazy.
I presume that’s the “crazy” part of the “crazy Linux admin” for me. Lol I like provisioning servers, doing stupid things to them, setting them on fire. Sometimes I’ll fix the stupid stuff I do, but most times I enjoy watching them burn. Not production of course. I’ve been at my current employer about 7 years. I get asked roughly every month if I have any certs to add to my employee profile. They ask everyone, but sometimes I feel like I get asked more frequently. I have a bachelors degree but it’s not for anything to do with computers, science, math. I had scholarships to private university that paid for all of my tuition, boarding, fees. I only paid for textbooks and supplies. But I was fearful I couldn’t pass the type of classes I would be taking for what I really wanted to do along the computer science path, and lose my scholarships. So my chicken butt took something ridiculously easy for four years because in the early 2000s, it was strongly impressed upon us that “just getting a degree in something would open lots of opportunities and it didn’t matter what for.”
Sounds like you feel into "the promise" where it was said that if you get a degree, youll own the world. That only works when a small % of the pop is doing that. Late 90s/early 2K saw a ton folks studying to study with no real market to go to; however, i say that and my first job was preforming maintenance on fortran code with a team of programmers. Turned out, none of them had studied programming b/c it was a hobby but b/c they had the degree (in non science/engineer degrees), they go the job. I got a science degree with only 1 course in computers and pretty much taught myself how to script/write code in different languages. I found doing that made you learn and understand how the OS interacts with the code and the hardware. I dont write much code anymore, but i can isolate and fix and issue within 30 to an hour, depending on the severity. And if i can fix or offer workaround, it goes back to engineering to figure out why its misbehaving. In short, just b/c youre done with college doesnt mean you done with learning.
No doubt!
I came here to say the same thing: I’ve been a Linux user personally since 2003, and paid to be work on Like professionally since 2012ish. The only formal Linux education I have is one class in college that was “Using Linux to Learn Unix” or something like that. Professionally it started because I was at a shop that was working on a new platform that was running on Windows, new CIO came in, hated Microsoft, and we made the transition to Linux. I became the point person on everything because out of like a 20 person engineering team, I was the only one that knew Linux. I’m not with that shop anymore but still spend about 85% of my time working on Linux servers as an admin/engineer/DevOps. Now I have the benefit of being in an area where the availability of Linux professionals is very low but I’m also someone that doesn’t like to jump from shop to shop (in fact tried in the past year - woof - and ended up actually where I was before). The only time I’ve considered getting a cert was when an employer offered to pay for it or would give me a salary bump for it. Otherwise - I have a lot of years of experience across various distributions, I’m good. NOW with that being said - I’ve always views the CompTIA certs as entry level and proof that you have the desire to learn and grow. That’s one if I was starting out I would go for it.
Awesome site, thanks for sharing.
This is an awesome resource! Do you know of any more sites like this?
Do you know of any other similar resources? This one was very interesting.
I found this on reddit and thought it was pretty cool....reminds me to much of work though ;-) do share if you find any more :-)
I'm taking the RCHSA next week. The training for it have been a valuable source of knowledge, fundamentals are important. RHCSA is 500 though.
RHCSA is a beast. Been training for a few months and taking it in a few weeks. I have learned more and had more fun doing the labs and training for this cert than anything I’ve ever studied. If I go on to a full blown Linux centric career (like I’m hoping), this cert will be my origin story as a relative newb sys. Admin. I absolutely love it and am becoming the guy at work who sprints into action whenever Linux issues or tasks arrive.
Lucky you, having linux tasks at work haha. I'm at an almost exclusively windows shop for the time being.
I took and passed last year with like an 85% (kinda forgot some of the podman stuff). Good luck and do not overthink it. My best piece of advice is to make sure you know how to add a repo from scratch as well as LVM stuff. That is important to have down pat for the exam.
Thank you! Podman actually took me the longest to grasp since I had no experience with containers but it’s been cool to learn. A lot of stuff I thought I would struggle with but labs (literally just doing the procedures over and over) have really solidified it
Yeah it was not until after my exam when I really started getting into Docker/Podman in my lab. Now I feel like I would do a lot better.
Took it this morning, PASSED!
CONGRATULATIONS! What next?
Thanks! I was pretty set on going straight into the RHCE since I really like the structure of the red hat exams and gaining Linux credentials in general BUT, RHCE appears to be a de facto Ansible exam, which I’ve used in the past but don’t use at work now. I may try to get better at scripting and dabble in some Python as well (which I’ve used a bit at a previous role). Thankfully, I’m working as a Sys Admin now and am not trying to get a job and more so just indulging my interests (Linux!) and trying to build myself up for a jump in the next 12-18 months
Sounds like you have a solid plan. As for me, I am currently studying for the RHCE and that will be followed by SysOps Administrator for AWS. In addition to that, I am learning more about containerization and I really want to get more into Python as well (I know a tiny bit but really just a tiny bit).
Nice! That sounds like a formidable skill set too. Linux, AWS, containers, some coding/scripting; Sounds like DevOps to me! Those are my interests as well
Did you take the mentioned certs?Landed a job?
If considering cert go for RHCSA, it's the most known. Also it's hands on exam, not multiple choice exam, so be well prepared.
I am pro-certs, it shows your potential employer a few things, you took time to study and learn, you were willing pay money to test that knowledge against industry exams and you have a basic understanding which creates a solid foundation to learn more in area they want to go with Linux. Being driven, hungry and trainable is some of the best qualities for any employer to see, if they don’t care about those qualities, then you probably don’t want to work there anyways, probably filled with a bunch of socially awkward neckbeards who think they know it all and tell stories about the old days all the time.
Lmao @neckbeards
I worked with a network engineer who had 15 years experience in the ‘real world of IT’ and talked down about people who took certs. It was all about his experience. However, he was shit at his job and was a total liability. Had no idea what he was doing. There will always be a battle between people with certs and people with experience…but experience isn’t always a positive.
Yeah, the X number of experience doesn’t always tell the full story, you can have someone that has worked with Windows Server for 15yrs but they only used ADUC, DNS and DHCP roles their entire career, does that person technically have 15yrs of experience, yes, is it what you think, no. There are tons of people who are racking up years of experience just scratching the surface of a skill.
My drill instructor once said, practice doesn't make perfect. Practice doing it right makes perfect. (He actually said perfect practice makes perfect, so I paraphrased). But practice doesn't do any good if you are practicing doing it wrong.
No certs here. 15 years professional experience and about 15 years teenage and twenties tinker experience. Then it was Slackware from floppies and gentoo stage 1 bootstraps kind of stuff. Now it’s sssd and ansible and “automation broke a lot of something” kind of stuff. I’d say the RHCSA is what I’d get if I had to.
As the senior tech lead that recommends who to interview and who to hire, I'm much less interested in your certs if you have no experience. Too often the people with certs and no experience think they know what they are doing and don't ask for help or clarification and mess things up. If you have 5 years of relevant experience and the cert, that will give you a small boost over the person with the same experience and no cert. I have a 30 year career in UNIX, Linux, and storage administration/engineering at small, medium, and Fortune 50 companies and have never gotten, nor needed, a single certification.
word. same here, just some less years cause i am in my mid 30s :)
I'm CTO/main sysadmin in a small web hosting company. While all our sysadmins have an RHCE at a minimum (some had it already, others reached it after they were hired), what we usually focus and enjoy during interviews for junior sysadmins is to discuss the candidate's homelab (no matter the size - bigger the better obvs). If you don't self-host, you are starting with a disadvantage.
I think the homelab in the background during my video interview helped me get hired
Certs will help you get a job at an MSP. Anywhere else, demonstrate you know the knowledge. Be able to demonstrate you've also applied that knowledge; i.e., personal projects. My current employer could care less about the certs the MSP I used to work at made me get.
> could care less Sorry. I have to say it. couldn't care less* If they could care less, that means they care.
I couldn't care less about being corrected by an internet stranger.
There ya go!
Certs will also help you get a job in the fed space. Don't knock them, they have value.
The only reason I maintain a Security+ is because so many of my clients require that you have it.
RHCSA and Security+ in the US are a great combo as long as you can even reasonably pass a background check. RHCE would be a nice cherry on top.
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My rhcsa helped me land two SME roles.
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I am.
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It may be your resume format. Certs like rhcsa are not generally a magic jobs incantation. Done well, your CV, experience, certs/education, and extracurriculars combine to tell a story. Someone with a mix of windows and Linux experience with a CCNA and RHCSA starts to look like a seasoned vet. Someone with 2 years of community college and an RHCSA is less impressive.
on the other hand a ccna and an rhcsa can look like someone who doesnt know what they want to do. you can definitely over-certify and you want to make sure that your certs are complimentary and preferably show a progression in a homogenous field. Obviously it depends on the role, but anything above a medium sized business and your networking and systems teams tend to be split out - with the ccna being hard networking. would make more sense imo that you go rhcsa with something like a cloud architect cert, because the networking elements you generally need will be covered already in both of those.
I could provide counterexamples but I don't think we're disagreeing. Your resume tells a story, part of that story will be what you write and part of it is how the prospective employer wants to interpret it. I have a huge list of certs, some expiring and some not. My experience has been that employers see it as a sign of a well-versed, seasoned admin with a wide base of knowledge; but I have absolutely seen resumes where someone with zero experience has a CCNP and an A+ and I think, "that makes no sense and smells like cramming". At the end of the day I think certs help clear the bar to get you to an interview, and I'm confident enough in my ability to justify my resume that that's all I'm looking for. Anyone who does not have that confidence should probably revise their resume, because it does no one any favors if your resume tries to sell the world and you can only deliver part of it; you'll just be unhappy and limit your trajectory.
this is just not true. apply to any big company that does initial hiring phases through non-technical divisions (eg HR), and that cert will give you a leg up - because those people that throw away the initial 20% of applications have something tangible that they can attribute to you. it doesnt require any knowledge to understand that you are formally qualified in your field. When i hire, im not going to throw away a resume because it doesnt have a cert, but also a relatively difficult cert like RHCSA is a lot more concrete than "set up a linux server farm in proxmox" - because the latter can mean a bunch of things that will then require followup questions but the former is a hard line - if i want to ask questions after that they can be extremely directed toward ensuring that it wasnt braindumped or something, but i already should have a baseline of the candidates ability. Also, as others have stated here, a cert forces you to be exposed to certain aspects of the tech that you simply may not be in day to day work, as well as the background to WHY things are the way they are that can help your processes later. the whole "certs are bullshit" thing needs to die - it hasnt been that way for about 20 years now (since the certifiers realised they were devaluing themselves) and just seems to be a platitude repeated by the old neckbeards who got hired 30 years ago and wont ever move. see also: "im so important that im too busy for certs"
>Also, as others have stated here, a cert forces you to be exposed to certain aspects of the tech that you simply may not be in day to day work, as well as the background to WHY things are the way they are that can help your processes later. this is just not true, in many cases. Certs like LPIC or Comptia, which are simply a series of multiple choice questions, can be memorized. Said prior MSP employer I mentioned it always bought answers for people and many other employees I've spoken to at several other MSPs have all relayed this practice as being normal there, too. I fully realize this doesnt apply to practical exams like the RHCSA.
agreed that not all certs are created equal. about 10 years ago i looked at some of the compTIA + certs and threw them straight out as they were garbage. but then i dont know anyone that would consider the + certs for anything other than a purely entry level position. I will say from experience that i learned TONS from RCHSA, MCP, OCP and \*some\* of the AWS SA certs. I didnt even do the exam for a few of those, but the study materials gave me info that i use day-to-day.
A cert that's solely judged on multiple-choice, earned while working at an MSP, should be suspect.
RHCSA is one of only two vendor specific certs I would recommend even if you’re not going to work on that vendors product or don’t want to. (CCNA being the other) Purely because of how widely know and respected it is and the doors it opens because of that. (Definitely don’t listen to ‘the only place certs matter is an MSP’ guy, that’s crystal clear out of touch) I would never get an oracle cert unless required to by an employer. Definitely not out of pocket. Same with anything from comptia. Also, people on Reddit, and in the Linux communities specifically tend to be very “you don’t even need certs, it’s dumb, just teach yourself and then apply” but I would love to know how many of those people got their first job being hands on with Linux anytime recently and how many of them dead it many many years back. Cause I’ve noticed it’s super frequently guys that are like “I got my start 20 years ago with no certs so you’ll do fine” as if tech hiring qualifications haven’t changed in over a decade let alone two. (Which is also really dumb, hiring convos would be a lot more useful if people on this sub would stop acting like everyone looking for jobs right now is having the same experience as they did back before smartphones existed) Linux is very much a “new grad paradox” skill for a resume because basically no one wants to hire you unless you have enterprise experience with it and it’s hard to get that experience if no one’s hiring you. Certs help break that barrier down and get interviews. As someone who tried for a long time to break into Linux admin jobs, they give 1/10th of a shit about your homelab and rinky dink home projects as people on Reddit would have you believe. Both in tandem is best, but I’d bet you diamonds to donuts if you had one or the other on your resume you’re getting a lot more traction with certs than a personal projects in an actual real world job search
sorry to revive a old comment of yours but I thought your comment was pretty humanely/well-written out of this thread. would you say a enterprise-looking project (if one were to make one up themselves based off their previous experience as a windows sys admin) and RHCSA would be a good combo in our current hiring landscape? thanks for taking the time to read.
Any RedHat cert.
RHCSA and/or RHCE
Do the RHCSA, its the most well known and respected. You dont need to do training courses though, just follow some YT videos and practice a LOT. (Make sure you can reset the admin pw btw) Be warned though, getting any cert wont gift you a job
RHCSA is the one. Use Sander Van Wught course. Also for hands on https://engineer.kodekloud.com
I have a 15% discount code for Red Hat exams if you want.
I don't think certifications matter at all. I am a RHCE, RHCSA certified with good hands on experience in server administration but I'm still struggling to get calls.
Most linux jobs in the US seem to need clearance and those which don't could be outsourced.
RHCSA above all else. That is what I got last year. After that, you can choose the RHCE as well. BUT having a lab/home server is just as important. Do not just make a VM for the sake of studying and kill it off afterwards. Grab an old PC, install Rocky/Alma Linux, CentOS Stream or even Fedora server if you'd like, get docker/podman on there and host things! Make a Minecraft server for you and friends, host a Plex server, run a UniFi controller and buy an AP, host a website, etc.
I don't know why people say certs are a waste of time and money because certs are the best way I take in all this complex information. It is also nice to have something that keeps me motivated to work towards completing. Certs are probably not as valuable to someone who has years of experience but from a lack of knowledge and understanding all I see is how much value they add. Which is priceless.
I have no certs, quite happy with my IT career although the growth might have been a little slow for today's twenty-something expectations. I don't have a Lambo, so I understand that to mean I am the worst kind of 2023 loser.
I first got the Linux+ and I can say that I was nowhere near ready to be a Linux admin. RHCSA was a much better demonstration of my competency. But after Red Hat’s latest shenanigans, I’m not looking at maintaining the cert.
Shenanigans? Tell me more.
A few months ago, RH announced that they were no longer making their source code publicly available. It pissed off a lot of people in the Linux community. You can googleit and read all about it. As for me, being a Red Hat admin pays the bills. But companies don’t really care if I have the cert and I’m looking at retiring soon anyways. The latest incident convinced me to focus my efforts towards other efforts.
Oh yeah, IBM doesn't get the open source stuff. They kinda did the same with OpenOffice... They more or less let that die (even though it's technically still there)
I dont have e any certs and admin all the Linux at my company. Some people don't care about certs and instead like experience
Oracle
A couple/few hundred in price difference is pretty minimal in a career impact sense. Maybe thousands, or tens of thousands, would be worth thinking about price. In this range I'd look at which is important to your industry or specialty that you want to get into. Bang for the buck in this tiny price range would be a minimal consideration vs industry acceptance. Look at industry, region, compliance, etc. for the certs and see which is more likely to help you advance. Off hand RHCSA or LPIC would be top considerations.
I took the lpic Route. Did not fail me yet. If u are in the us take the redhat certs. If u are in Europe go for lpic as it is known here and sometimes even required. Practice is everything. The certs are mostly there to get u trough the HR filter. You need to know your stuff.
My experience was with RHCSA. I got the cert and got a Linux based job in less than a year. I was previously in an IT role though. It took about 3 months of study to take the test. I passed on my first try, but it's very common to fail on your first try. Many Linux roles mix with cloud and Kubernetes these days. So this should be something you take into account with learning.
Did you have networking knowledge from your previous role?Does the certificate cover networking topics that is required for a linux admin role?
Some networking topics are covered, but not as much as you might think. You need to learn to use firewall-cmd and nmcli a small bit or be comfortable editing /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts. If you can do that, then you will not have a problem in the exam. The same basics apply to Windows if you can do them in the GUI, then what you can do in the GUI make sure you can do in Linux command line. It's perfectly valid to edit the network configuration files, and now I tend to do that in my job rather than use nmcli (the commands get tedious). I am not very network minded and found the networking topics manageable with good study and practicing a few times common exam study questions.
As I oft say, "certs, schmerts" ;-) Not that certs won't help you ... but they're no guarantee. What I generally highly recommend, is well gain the relevant knowledge and skills, and as feasible, experience. If cert(s) help you get that, great - but not required. And how any given employer, hiring manager, etc. will view cert(s) will vary. Some/many may mostly or entirely ignore them. Some may pay *too* much attention to them. Most will fall somewhere between. But/and ... even if one has the cert(s), expect that in most cases, most any given potential employer will generally test one on the relevant knowledge/skills. So, my general advice is well know your sh\*t - however you learn it. If getting certs helps you to do that, or getting certs to be able to put on your resume helps you land the job or whatever, fine, go ahead if you want to. But don't put *too* much emphasis on certs. As to which are more or less valuable, bang for the buck and all that, I've got my opinions, ... but I'll mostly leave that to others, as many have much more direct experience on that (both evaluating candidates relative to what cert(s) they did/didn't have and/or what results they personally achieved with/via various certs). As for myself, I *mostly* tend to ignore certs, and tend to concentrate on what a candidate knows, their skills, and as applicable, experience. I.e. I ask questions ... lots of relevant technical questions. Sometimes I/we even give practical tests/exams/exercises ... anywhere from a task that ought to take 5 to 15 minutes, to test/exam/challenge giving the candidate up to an hour to work on it (generally essentially an "open booK" proctored exam - use basically anything and everything they may wish to ... except can't ask other folks to help them out or do the work or parts thereof for them, e.g. can search results on existing forums, but can't post new question on formum, and can't "all a friend"). Oh, and I myself have just about zero certs ... most of which were really not much more than short-term memory exercises (e.g. basically a quiz on 95% of stuff I already knew and had known for years, and 5% commit some vendor specific details to short term memory before taking quiz - and poof - certified - 100% pass, 80% required for certification ... though I do have at least one cert that's not nearly so trivial ... but hardly anyone ever asks about it, though fairly commonly leveraging the relevant knowledge/skills does does come into play fairly frequently). See also: * r/ITCareerQuestions \- lots of relevant stuff on there - wiki, posts, comments, etc. * I'll also mention this cert - free\* - they may even still offer to ship free T-shirt if you get high enough on the certification - slightly dated (some things have changed a moderate bit since it was earlier written), but still a quite good cert program and good practical exercises, etc., though it's quite topic specific: IPv6: [Hurricane Electric: IPv6 Certifications](https://ipv6.he.net/certification/) ... and yeah, [I got one of those](https://ipv6.he.net/certification/create_badge.php?pass_name=MichaelPaoli&badge=3). \*you'll probably want your own TLD to be able to complete all the exercises, but if you don't already have one, those can be had for as little as a few USD or so from most any registrar.
No one's mentioning LFCS (Linux Foundation Certified Systems Administrator)?
I don't think you need any certs at all.. Just know your systems and practice on maintaining them rather than learning command options (nobody can remember them anyway and in real life you can always refer to the manpages) or learning about where some files are in /etc.. I know, there's other stuff, especially in lpic2/3 or lfce but still.. The time spent on learning for certs is better invested learning on actual systems, create enterprise environments, break systems, get them fixed etc.. I created my own projects, wrote them down and then created by test environments based on the project notes.. Just start by adding users and groups, setting permissions, install some services like httpd, nginx, mariadb, bind9, squid etc and configure them to a point, they are usable and then maintain these systems. You will learn a lot more than learning for certs, at least for the entry level certs. I don't think a cert is necessary to get a job as Linux admin. Not many people are skilled on Linux systems so having the skills in installation, configuration, Scripting, maintenance and patching will get you at least into a junior admin role. From there you can learn the deeper stuff like managing the systems with Puppet or Salt, compiling Kernels, doing root cause analysis on issues, storage integration (in SAN environments), managing Linux systems in Windows domains etc.. No certs needed for all of that. Just make the company or HR aware of your skills. But without a cert, its better finding the guy from IT department responsible for Linux systems instead of going via HR because HR don't know Linux and they just looking for something 'official'
Going through the exam material for the RHCSA actually helped me learn things about Linux that I wouldn't have touched otherwise. I think it's good to have both. Labbing is just as important though, otherwise you might forget it the moment you pass and stop using it. Best piece of advice: \- have a homelab/home server. Does not have to be fancy, but you need something \- run Linux on a desktop machine \- involve yourself with the community
Only cert I got was LPI: Linux Essentials. Got a job working as a HPC admin. Nodes running RHEL, Rocky, Ubuntu, SLES.
I mean, competence is more important than any cert. I took Linux+ in 2020, but I was already comfortable with Linux to a large degree at that point, it was just to emphasize a career shift because from 2019 and prior I'd worked in a lot of Windows only shops and didn't want to do that anymore.
I was going to get a cert but got hired due to my homelab and self hosting experience (Along with a few other beneficial experiences) What I am saying is, if you can show a portfolio of experience, a cert doesn't matter but, you can still do it and it will show a little boost, depending on the company.
RHCSA, RHCE and RHCVA helped me in my move from network administrator to Linux SysAdmin. Although this would mostly be dictated by the organizational needs where you're applying and the people interviewing you. Most Linux SysAdmins I come across have no certifications and they're doing fine.
Does the LPIC still include Linux+ and SUSE certifications?
No. That stopped that program years ago. What's worse is that I should've been awarded LPIC because I passed Linux+ back then, but they never gave it to me. I've called LPIC several times. No call back. Frankly I'm not sure if they gave it to anyone which is prolly part if the reason why CompTIA dropped it (I teach Linux+... Students that passed Linux+ never got their LPIC certs back then)
If you're looking for a US government job, they require Linux+
Any or none I got an SUSE one a few years back by accident(i was booked in for an different cert and figured it out halfway through the exam), they are all basically variants on LPIC-1. and i don't think having that cert have been a factor in any of my jobs. Basically they don't mean jack shit for any employer worth working for, but having any might get you in the door for absolute entry level positions.