RHCSA Certification: All You Need To Know About This Certification

The Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) exam is designed for candidates who desire to gain the skills and expertise required to become a system administrator. RHCSA exam is also referred to as EX200 exam-which is also its exam code. This exam tests the candidate’s ability to solve practical issues related to administrative roles using the RHEL platform. 

If you are planning to boost your profile as a system administrator, RHCSA certification is one of the best options. 90% of the candidates have enjoyed highly paid administrative positions through this credential. Moreover, 97% of the certified professionals have claimed that their working abilities have been fostered through this Red Hat credential. Let us learn all the principal details that can work as support for you to become an RHCSA-certified professional.

Exam Overview of RHCSA Exam

Exam Name: Red Hat Certified System Administrator 

Exam Code: EX200

Exam time: 150 minutes 

Number of questions: 20 questions

Passing score: 210/300

Passing percentage: 70%

Cost: $400

What Type Of Questions Are Asked In The RHCSA Exam?

The questions in the RHCSA exam are practical. They require hands-on experience to pass them. Unlike other exams, the RHCSA exam does not have multiple-choice questions. You need to perform certain tasks being asked in the exam. These tasks will evaluate your functional performance of the concepts.

Exam Outline of RHCSA Exam

Understand and use essential tools

  • Access a shell prompt and issue commands with the correct syntax
  • Use input-output redirection (>, >>, |, 2>, etc.)
  • Use grep and regular expressions to analyze text
  • Access remote systems using SSH
  • Log in and switch users in multiuser targets
  • Archive, compress, unpack, and uncompress files using tar, star, gzip, and bzip2
  • Create and edit text files
  • Create, delete, copy, and move files and directories
  • Create hard and soft links
  • List, set, and change standard ugo/rwx permissions
  • Locate, read, and use system documentation including man, info, and files in /usr/share/doc

Create simple shell scripts

  • Conditionally execute code (use of: if, test, [], etc.)
  • Use Looping constructs (for, etc.) to process file, command line input
  • Process script inputs ($1, $2, etc.)
  • Processing output of shell commands within a script

Operate running systems

  • Boot, reboot, and shut down a system normally
  • Boot systems into different targets manually
  • Interrupt the boot process in order to gain access to a system
  • Identify CPU/memory intensive processes and kill processes
  • Adjust process scheduling
  • Manage tuning profiles
  • Locate and interpret system log files and journals
  • Preserve system journals
  • Start, stop and check the status of network services
  • Securely transfer files between systems

Configure local storage

  • List, create, and delete partitions on MBR and GPT disks
  • Create and remove physical volumes
  • Assign physical volumes to volume groups
  • Create and delete logical volumes
  • Configure systems to mount file systems at boot by universally unique ID (UUID) or label
  • Add new partitions and logical volumes, and swap to a system non-destructively

Create and configure file systems

  • Create, mount, unmount, and use vfat, ext4, and xfs file systems
  • Mount and unmount network file systems using NFS
  • Configure autofs
  • Extend existing logical volumes
  • Create and configure set-GID directories for collaboration
  • Diagnose and correct file permission problems

Deploy, configure, and maintain systems

  • Schedule tasks using at and cron
  • Start and stop services and configure services to start automatically at boot
  • Configure systems to boot into a specific target automatically
  • Configure time service clients
  • Install and update software packages from Red Hat Network, a remote repository, or from the local file system
  • Modify the system bootloader

Manage basic networking

  • Configure IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
  • Configure hostname resolution
  • Configure network services to start automatically at boot
  • Restrict network access using firewall-cmd/firewall

Manage users and groups

  • Create, delete, and modify local user accounts
  • Change passwords and adjust password aging for local user accounts
  • Create, delete, and modify local groups and group memberships
  • Configure superuser access

Manage containers

  • Find and retrieve container images from a remote registry
  • Inspect container images
  • Perform container management using commands such as podman and skopeo
  • Build a container from a Container file
  • Perform basic container management such as running, starting, stopping, and listing running containers
  • Run a service inside a container
  • Configure a container to start automatically as a system service
  • Attach persistent storage to a container

Follow study points for the exam

Who Is The Targeted Audience Of The RHCSA Exam?

The targeted audience who is recommended to take the RHCSA exam must be: 

  • Experienced Red Hat Enterprise Linux system administrators seeking validation of their skills
  • Students who have attended Red Hat System Administration I (RH124) and Red Hat System Administration II (RH134) and are on the path to becoming an RHCSA
  • Experienced Linux system administrators who require a certification either by their organization or based on a mandate (DoD 8570 directive)
  • IT professionals who are on the path to becoming a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
  • An RHCE who is noncurrent or who is about to become noncurrent and wants to recertify as an RHCE
  • DevOps professionals who wish to demonstrate their expertise in the fundamentals of container technology

What Is The Pathway To Earning The RHCSA Exam?

There are no prerequisites to take the RHCSA exam. If you have the required knowledge and hands-on experience mentioned above, you can take the RHCSA exam. However, if you are naïve to the field, you must follow the pathway given below:

Path 1:

  1. Take Red Hat Enterprise Linux Technical Overview (RH024) course
  2. Take Red Hat System Administration I (RH124) course
  3. Take Red Hat System Administration II (RH134) course
  4. Take Red Hat Certified System Administrator (EX200) exam

Path 2:

  1. Take RHCSA Rapid Track (RH199) course 
  2. Take Red Hat Certified System Administrator (EX200) exam

What Is The Career Worth Of The RHCSA Exam?

RHCSA is a worthy and useful certification. The advantages of gaining this cert are given below:

  • RHCSA certification is an excellent addition to your resume. It grabs the attention of recruiters, who are highly impressed by the Red Hat System Administrator certification. 
  • You would be able to have a complete understanding of the usage of the RHEL platform so that you can become a professional administrator. 
  • This certification prepares you for all the required skills to become an expert administrator. You can perform all the duties with utmost confidence and accuracy.
  • Red Hat is a well-known and reputable certification provider. It is highly recognized by all the companies who wish to hire personnel designated to handle their system administration.

What Is The Salary Of an RHCSA Certified Professional?

If you earn Red Hat System Administrator certification, you can earn a salary ranging from $60,000 to $120,000k. The average income of an RHCSA is $90,000. This shows that the professional with this cert has a high scope of career growth.

What Is The Best Way To Prepare For The RHCSA Exam?

RHCSA is indeed a hard nut to crack. To pass the exam, you can follow these steps:

  1. Study the exam guide for the RHCSA exam. It is very important to learn about the exam, its requirements, and the course outline to prepare for the exam. Gaining accurate information about the exam can help you to prepare with ease. 
  2. To learn the course topics, you must be vigilant in deciding which course would work better for you. If you already have prior knowledge about the domains, you can take the self-paced course. Else you can take the instructor-led course where you can learn from an instructor. 
  3. Practice what you have learned. It is important that you practice the concepts with practical demonstration. This would help you to solve the exam questions with higher precision.

Key Takeaway

For administrative roles, the RHCSA exam is intended to give you the best-intended solutions. Gaining this certification is hard, but the advantages and perks that you enjoy through this certification make it worth obtaining. Obtaining the Red Hat System Administrator credential opens up new ways for you. The RHCSA exam makes you credible to take the RHCA-Red Hat Certified Architect exam. When preparing for the exam, you may find many recommended courses and exams prescribed by Red Hat. It is important to know that the success of the RHCSA exam does not depend upon the recommended exams. You need to have hands-on experience and working knowledge to ace your exam.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you are thinking of just learning the concepts would make you excel in the exam. It won’t actually work. The questions in the RHCSA exam are conceptual and practical so you need to grasp each and every concept. It makes the exam quite difficult for many candidates.

You can get a highly-paid system administrator job if you earn RHCSA. Gaining experience along with this certification can greatly increase the chance of being appointed to a good position.

It takes about 3 months to fully prepare for the RHCSA exam. There are courses as well as labs. Apart from learning the course, you have to have a complete understanding of all the concepts. 2-3 hours of daily study is required to complete the course.

The result of the RHCSA exam is delivered in 3 working days. The result is prepared directly by Red Hat Certification Central. The official result statement is sent to the candidate. Individual marking of each question is not provided in the result.

Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) is obtained next after passing Red Hat Certified System Administrator. Some would say RHCE is better than RHCSA, and this is because it has advanced learning. But on a genuine basis, both are equally important, as you cannot attain RHCSA without gaining RHCE.

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