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Red Hat Software Businesses Programming IT Technology

Red Hat Announces Certified Architect Curriculum 203

Posted by michael from the certs-worth-the-paper-they're-printed-on dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "Red Hat announced a new advanced certification today, Red Hat Certified Architect. One training expert, however, cautions that Red Hat certifications can lock administrators in to Red Hat-specific skills."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Red Hat Announces Certified Architect Curriculum More

Red Hat Announces Certified Architect Curriculum

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  • Who cares... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by technogeeky ( 780692 )
    as long as were are locking people in to Linux, this will be a better place. Distro nuts need not apply.

    • Re:Who cares... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      Distro nuts need not apply.

      You are perceiving the issue through a mirrot. The primary complaint is not from distro nuts, but choice nuts.

      Yes, that would include the choice not to use Linux.

      KFG

  • Certified Architect... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) *
    Sounds almost as credible as "Subway Sandwich Artist".

    Even though they aren't always terribly useful, at least MSCE sounds more official. Normally this should be a non-issue but management likes titles that sound "official" or like they should carry some weight.
    • MSCE used to sound more official, before they started churning them out like McNuggets.
    • While I agree with you, I'm also not sure I want to be handing people the title of Engineer - I went to school for 5 years to earn that, and it shouldn't take a month and $400.
      • They already have RHCEs. This is a more advanced course (which is also open to RHCEs). So your point is moot.

        It still doesn't solve the problem that the naming isn't all that great and we are already fighting a FUD war again MSFT w/management about the usefulness, cost, and stablity of Linux over Windows.

        This may not help at all.
      • You and me both (school wise, I mean). I appreciate what MSCEs have learned, just not sure if it's as valuable as it's made out to be.
      • I'm also not sure I want to be handing people the title of Engineer - I went to school for 5 years to earn that

        I've never been a big fan of certifications, but...
        Engineering is an awfully big camp. What kind engineer are you? Railroad? Civil? Computer? I wouldn't get so worked up over it. It's only a title, after all, and it does contain Red Hat in it, so it's narrowed down for you already.

    • The whole certification issue has been discussed here many times before (whether they are worthwhile or not), but it is particularly worrysome when different vendors start using different terms for roughly the same thing.

      Besides, when I see that new Red Hat title, I can't help but think of George Castanza saying that...
    • Normally this should be a non-issue but management likes titles that sound "official" or like they should carry some weight.

      Big sticks carry some weight, and are an essential LART
    • The title Engineer is something that Microsoft got in trouble over in Canada.

      You see, in Canada the term Engineer means something. I don't recall hearing of any resolution to the situation, but some time back Microsoft was officially made to stop using the term Engineer in regards to their Mouseclickeers.

      • It used to mean something over here too, but it got sufficiently diluted (Sanitation Engineer?). Now the only thing that matters is if you are a "Professional Engineer" which is far from a trivial accomplishment.
        • I agree. With architect and engineer (and doctor, lawyer, etc.) there are requirements and licensing programs in place. With a slew of network engineers and software architects coming from colleges and these certification programs, people are quickly deceived by all the titles and certifications. The fact is, an MCSE is not an engineer.

          We require a professional license for these other occupations because of how easy it is to be conned, and because of how much damage they can do. I consider some computer-re
          • We require a professional license for these other occupations because of how easy it is to be conned, and because of how much damage they can do. I consider some computer-related occupations to be just as dangerous.

            Setting up a computer system or network can cause monetary dammage, but (except in specific circumstances) is not going to cause injury or death.

            Where you can teach yourself C and learn your networking at home in your basement, you cannot become a doctor through self-education.

            A doctor is a
          • The problem is this: Where you can teach yourself C and learn your networking at home in your basement, you cannot become a doctor through self-education.
            But you can get a Ph.D. in some of the must mundane academic pursuits possible and, once people have that Ph.D., they get the enormous ego boost of being allowed to speak authoritatively on ANY subject they can lay their hands on.

            So essentially the damage being done by the proprietary system is just as bad as the damage being done by the self-taught peop
      • IIRC, MCSE in Canada just means MCSE, just like RAC in Britain no longer stands for 'Royal Automobile Club'.

        --

    • at least MSCE sounds more official.

      ...except it ISN'T MSCE, but MCSE [microsoft.com] (Microsoft Certified System Engineer). MSCE would be nonsense anyway, as Microsoft is one word, and hence shouldn't warrant 'MS' in any official, marketing-sanctioned, literature.

      That said, searching microsoft.com for MSCE reveals a disturbing number of hits. Looks like someone's not doing their job of protecting the brand images properly!

      --

      • Re:Certified Architect... (Score:4, Informative)

        by micromoog ( 206608 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:45PM (#9500128)
        MSCE would be nonsense anyway, as Microsoft is one word, and hence shouldn't warrant 'MS' in any official, marketing-sanctioned, literature.

        The company uses MS as an abbreviation for itself all the time. MSN, MS-DOS, and MSDN are the first three examples that spring to mind.

        • The company uses MS as an abbreviation for itself all the time. MSN, MS-DOS, and MSDN are the first three examples that spring to mind.

          MS-DOS, MSIE (not sure if that one is officially used), MSNBC... just the next few that springs to my mind. In reality MS is a fine abreviation for Microsoft, regardless of whether it's a compound word or not.

          But, the grandparent is correct that it's MCSE, if only because it would otherwise be MSCSE, even more difficult to remember :)

          That said, I used to screw it up all

  • Question 1 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @04:51PM (#9499486)
    You've installed Fedora and it erased your Windows partition. What do you do?

    • Re:Question 1 (Score:5, Funny)

      by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @04:55PM (#9499530)
      Celebrate that Fedora automatically detected and patched a security hole.
    • Repair the partition table by generating the C/H/S values from the LBA, delete the Fedora partition and install FreeBSD.

      Do I win a cookie?

    • Re:Question 2 (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You attempt to install an rpm package only to discover that at least 8 other rpms have to be installed beforehand (only 3 of which are available at Red Hat's site) then you discover the 8th package requires you to install an obscure dev rpm of glibc which is only available from an unreliable ftp server in Poland and by now you have invested the last 3 hours of your life into installing this one application, at this moment which of the following phrases should you shout in order to help this process along:

      A
      • Trick question. Real admins install from source.
      • E: "Oh, no, not this again... it's RPM DEPENDANCY HELL!!!"

        That's what I usually shout. Especially when you find a package that requires a different version of RPM itself... ugh!

        I personally love the Ports collection in FreeBSD, and love the idea of apt (but haven't used it yet), but otherwise I "grew up" on RedHat... it's a love/hate thing, but in the end I'm still using RedHat for most server projects...
    • If Fedora actually did that. But it doesn't modify your Windows XP partition of lose any data at all.

      If you tell it to, it writes out the partition table in a format that's valid, but not recognised by Windows XP. To fix it, reboot into Linux and change the format back with sfdisk. Problem solved.
    • You were suppose to write down the CHS values first which results in no problem at all, we're sorry to inform you, you have failed but for your effort here is a key chain.

  • Rad Hat training... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @04:52PM (#9499488)
    It would be nice if Red Hat offered a certification course for software developers.
    • It would be nice if Red Hat offered a certification course for software developers.

      Are you saying that software is/should be certified by redhat before it goes in?? Wouldn't that be like M$ driver signing. We see how well everyone liked that.

    • Re:Rad Hat training... (Score:3, Informative)

      by TV-SET ( 84200 )
      Well, they do provide trainig [redhat.com]. They just don't give out certificates on those. :)
    • Yeah, as it is, there are only about 40 different IT security certifications. We certainly need more.

      I don't know, maybe we really do need more security certs; it's just beginning to seem a little ridiculous.

  • Red Hat-specific skills? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Mz6 ( 741941 ) *
    For those of us that didn't RTFA, Anyone care to expand upon that? What are those specific skills?
    • Karma be damned, I can't resist.

      1. Never do another headless install.
      2. Never use the command line to change settings again, use X!
      3. Don't pick specific software you want installed, pick broad categories so that lots of crap you don't want gets installed too.
      4. up2date -u
      • > Never do another headless install

        Umm, what are you talking about specifically? Heard of kickstart? Red Hat still has a graphical and a text based install. The graphical can even be done over VNC. Remote kickstarts are also possible by passing some install parameters (kickstart filename, network location, etc) via DHCP.

        > Never use the command line to change settings again, use X!

        Again what specifically are you talking about? Most tools still have text-gui interfaces, in addition to the X-gui

  • Er.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ibanez ( 37490 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @04:53PM (#9499502)

    One training expert, however, cautions that Red Hat certifications can lock administrators in to Red Hat-specific skills

    Well, DUH...it is Red Hat certification. I can't imagine Red Hat would focus too much on teaching people how to use OTHER distros.
    • So who would you rather employ, someone who knows how to use redhat-config-* (or system-config-* as they are now known), or someone who knows how to edit each of the corresponding config files? HINT: The second one can probably pick up Debian, *BSD, or other *NIX of your choice in under a week if you decide to migrate away from Red Hat at any point.

      • Re:Er.... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by tux_deamon ( 663650 )

        So who would you rather employ, someone who knows how to use redhat-config-* (or system-config-* as they are now known), or someone who knows how to edit each of the corresponding config files

        As a matter of fact, RHCE track GLS instructors teach vi, scripting, and configuration by editing directive files directly. Having actually taken the RHCE, I can attest to the fact that not only was there no time to install the GUI tools (it's optional), one may be hard pressed to find the time to even use them (the

  • red-hat lock-in (Score:5, Insightful)

    by surreal-maitland ( 711954 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @04:53PM (#9499503) Journal
    well, yes. when you get certified for a particular distro, you're going to get informed about *that* distro and no other. fortunately, for most human beings, learning one thing does not outright prevent them from learning other things.

    • Re:red-hat lock-in (Score:2, Informative)

      by krgallagher ( 743575 )
      "well, yes. when you get certified for a particular distro, you're going to get informed about *that* distro and no other"

      Yeah but that is what I like about SuSE's [suse.com] Certification [suse.com]. They basically took the LPI [lpi.org] Certification and added one SuSE specific test to each level.

    • Re:red-hat lock-in (Score:2, Informative)

      by weeble ( 50918 )
      I am a Red Hat trainer working in the UK. There is no vendor lock-in.

      This morning I have been teaching system V services. I have taught how to initialize these services on Red Hat, Debian, SuSE, Mandrake and Solaris.

      This afternoon I am working my way through Squid. For Apache, Samba, NFS and all other services we recommend not using the GUI tools but vi (or emacs). All of these work the same way on all Linux as we deal with the application not the Distro. Where there are differences such as 'service

  • I'm already locked... (Score:5, Funny)

    by KrisCowboy ( 776288 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @04:53PM (#9499505) Journal
    ...into red-hat specific linux administration. Been using it for 2 years now...all the way from 7.2 to FC 2. Tried to install Debian Woody a few weeks ago, no success. Couldn't even figure out what's going on. So guys, forget RedHat. You won't be needing any certification to work with it.

    • That's funny... I've been running Debian for about 4 years and I've been quite happy with it the whole time, but when I try out Fedora I can't even find a tool similar to debfoster for keeping the system clean from unnecessary packages.

      Point is, the thing you're familiar with is always going to be easier for you to use than the thing you're unfamiliar with. No surprise there. You can choose to stay in your shell and bash other distros that you know little about, or you can choose to broaden your horizo

  • Pot, kettle (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jb.hl.com ( 782137 ) <joe@[ ]-baldwin.net ['joe' in gap]> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @04:55PM (#9499535) Homepage Journal
    One training expert, however, cautions that Red Hat certifications can lock administrators in to Red Hat-specific skills.


    And the MSCE and other qualifications don't?
    • Well, the CompTIA certs (A+ Netwok+ etc.), although kinda entry level, tend to be broad theory, rather than product specific.
    • >> One training expert, however, cautions that Red
      >> Hat certifications can lock administrators in to
      >> Red Hat-specific skills.

      > And the MSCE and other qualifications don't?

      Silly person. Why on Earth would Microsoft support certifications that can lock administrators in to Red Hat-specific skills?

      [*ducks*]

  • locking in (Score:4, Interesting)

    by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @04:55PM (#9499547) Homepage Journal
    Is this any better than Microsoft Certification? I wonder if it will lock more into Redhat and paying for that. Linux may be "better" in some ways to windows but this is still locking in.

  • Certification lock-in (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CharAznable ( 702598 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:00PM (#9499609)
    If you take certification classes, and that locks you into a particular distro, then it's your own fault. There's really no excuse for not doing your homework, be it in RH certification classes or at home reading the Gentoo manuals.
    • No, to be more precise. If you take certification classes, and that locks you into a particular distro, then you're an idiot.

      The implication of the "Training Professional's" words are that if you get this certification you will be forever incapable of learning how to use other distributions.
    • Also don't forget the "marketing" lock-in. I had a friend many years taking Microsoft exams. One of the questions was how much memory Win95 needed to run (this was just after Win95 had been released). The answer they expected you to give was 4MB, which is what Microsoft marketing preached at the time. Of course everyone knew that in the real world you needed double that amount. Everyone taking the test had to give the marketing answer.

  • Why "Architect"? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mattkime ( 8466 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:02PM (#9499626)
    Why is the word "Architect" used to describe someone with an advanced proficiency with RedHat?

    Do you build structures out of RedHat?

    Is your certification revoked if any of your projects crash ever?


    • It's a common term. Check out the title in addition to Chairman [microsoft.com].

      Or check out one of the 3.25 million hits from this google search [google.com].

    • Re:Why "Architect"? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well... In BC (Canada) MCSEs aren't allowed to say what MCSE stands for on ther resume or in job interviews because they're not engineers.
    • Hey, my official title is "Solution Architect", you insensitive clod!

      Which means I'm a consultant who has to have a cool-sounding title to command a higher hourly rate.
    • There's even more to it than that. I used to work for a computer magazine called New Architect, and we got more than one irate email from people outside the United States, in countries where the term "architect" was reserved specifically for ... well, architects. It would expressly illegal in some of these countries, for example, to advertise that you had an architect on your staff if you did not employ somebody who knew how to design buildings.

      These people would write us demanding that we change the name
      • In many countries, being an architect is seen as more respectable as it is in the US. In fact, it's often used as a sort of title along with a name. Like a medical doctor would be Doctor Smith in this country, in Guatemala for example, you would often be referred to as Architecto Smith. (I may have spelled that wrong, I was there a couple years ago, and don't really know spanish).

        I recently finished five years of architecture school, got my degree, and now I'd need three years as an architectural intern, t
      • Something tells me calling yourself a "certified architect" in those countries would be even a little worse.

        I tend to agree, though I personally think that the bastardisation of "Engineer" is even worse. We now have Software Engineers, Network Engineers, and even Sanitation Engineers. It seems to me that an Engineer usually does something innovative, solves a problem, or something requiring a lot of skill and intelligence.

        Architect is also something that requires quite a bit of skill (and, like a true En
    • "Why is the word "Architect" used to describe someone with an advanced proficiency with RedHat?"

      Why is the word "Engineer" used to describe someone with a proficiency with Microsoft?

      Do you build structures out of Microsoft?
      NO, you administrate networks and Windows systems, not design them.

      Is your certification revoked if any of your projects crash--or your corporation basicly shuts down due to virus infection site-wide-- ever?

    • Do you build structures out of RedHat?

      Architects don't build. They design. And yes, the course is about designing structures - directory structures, clustering systems, logical security domains, etc.

      And Red Hat is two words. So There :^)

  • Um... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:02PM (#9499637) Homepage Journal
    "....Red Hat certifications can lock administrators in to Red Hat-specific skills."

    No they can't. Knowing a Red Hat-specific technique does not prevent you from learning other ways of doing things.

  • But is this going to turn into a mockable thing, like A+ is now?

  • locked into Red-hat specific tools (Score:5, Funny)

    by daveb ( 4522 ) <davebremer.gmail@com> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:04PM (#9499657) Homepage
    That is so true. If you study to the level of RHCE (or whatever) you can't ever transfer your skills to anything else. In fact, you sign in blood not to ever touch a Gentoo system and working with Suse is likely to land you a jail term (not much of a risk if you take the optional lobotomy provided at the exam center)

    Get real!

    If someone is worth their salt then skills learnt with one distribution will be transferrable to another. The days of rote memorisation being sufficient for passing are pretty much gone - it'd even be a challenge to pass a MS exam with zero understanding of what you had memorised. The days of any employer (or even client) being impressed solely by a certificate are also (thankfully) passed. Any cert is just another fibre in a CV bow that indicates a minimum achievment, which should be strenthened by experience in the field

    Besides - last I heard Redhat pretty much followed [redhat.com] the few standards that exist such as the FHS [pathname.com].

    It's not as if redhat is the only distribution to have tools that it developed for itself

    • If you study to the level of RHCE (or whatever) you can't ever transfer your skills to anything else.

      I call bullshit, learning more specifics does not somehow negate your general purpose knowledge. The fact is that a lot of places use Redhat, and getting the cert will look good on a resume. Whether the cert makes you more knowledgeable is a heavily-debated, but largely moot point. Some great techs and some not-so-great techs will get the cert, but it won't tip their skills one way or the other.

      Of cour
      • I call bullshit, learning more specifics does not somehow negate your general purpose knowledge.

        Did you even read the post you were replying to? I've included the full paragraph for your enlightenment:

        If you study to the level of RHCE (or whatever) you can't ever transfer your skills to anything else. In fact, you sign in blood not to ever touch a Gentoo system and working with Suse is likely to land you a jail term (not much of a risk if you take the optional lobotomy provided at the exam center)

        Did

      • Re:locked into Red-hat specific tools (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "I call bullshit..."

        I call dumbass.

  • Redhat lock ??? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by anandpur ( 303114 )
    As long as it is about LINUX then you can apply same skils on any distribution, GUI may be different. Most of the time it is CLI that is used and it is almost same on all distributions.

  • Lock-in isn't such an issue (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mackman ( 19286 ) * on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:09PM (#9499708)
    Look at the course outline: NTP, BIND, Kerberos, OpenSSH, Sendmail, Postfix, FTP, Apache, CVS, LDAP, PAM, . How is knowing how to configure and secure those apps going to lock you into RedHat. Do you really think admins are too dumb to find the config files when they're in another directory (shudder). I mean, sure, there's going to be some vendor-specific lessons, but a server app is almost identicle across distros, especially since most admins will package up their own preconfigured packages.

  • Red Hat-specific skills (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nasarius ( 593729 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:11PM (#9499731)
    Red Hat certifications can lock administrators in to Red Hat-specific skills

    I don't like Red Hat. I don't really like Fedora, either. I think SuSE, Mandrake, Gentoo, and Debian fill all the niches that pretty much any Linux user could ever need.
    That said, distro "lock-in" is necessary to some extent. Having tried nearly every distro available, I know there is no Linux 'standard' especially when it comes to common administrative tasks like package management, updates, and system configuration. So I doubt that Red Hat is teaching specific skills any more than is necessary.

  • Red Hat Specific Skills (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And Microsorft skills are more general???? Unless you are running scripts that you don't even understand I don't see how the skills a unix sysadmin on any platform and a linux sysadmin on any distro could learn would be unportable to others. There are things that surprise me on one system or another, but isn't that what man and apropos are for.

  • It's not the MSCE.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by michael path ( 94586 ) * on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:26PM (#9499910) Homepage Journal
    This is definitely flamebait (or offtopic, but enough of your are making this mistake, so....), I will be modded accordingly.....BUT:

    For crissakes, there is no MSCE. It's the MCSE - Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer [microsoft.com]. Most of you zealots have no idea what it takes to make an MCSE, for that matter.

    Yes, the NT4 track brought about a lot of 'paper MCSEs', systems administrators who didn't know their ass from the hole in their PCI slots. I was one of them.

    The MCSE 2000 course was much more difficult, and although you can still 'bootcamp' it within 2 weeks, it's not a cakewalk. You will learn common sense administration. You will learn enough about TCP/IP to set up a network that should scale to 300 users. Basic stuff. All that can be reasonable expected from someone still trying to cut their teeth as a network administrator.

    It's not an expert, end-all, be-all certification, but it's sufficient for people who need to administer Windows networks (though I certainly wouldn't have them designing them, necessarily). It also requires the commitment to sit through (at last check) 7 tests.

    I am an MCSE. I spent a few months of studying and a couple years of real world experience getting there. I've considered Red Hat's offerings, as well as the more independent LPI offering, for Linux certification.

    The fact that a product is unfavorable to yourself, whether Red Hat's distribution of Linux, or Microsoft's Windows, is not a valid reason to put down those who picked up the necessary skills to validate themselves with these certifications.

    • Re:It's not the MSCE.... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )
      Most of you zealots have no idea what it takes to make an MCSE, for that matter.

      about $5500.00 plus 4 weeks of your time.

      I know, we sent 5 people here from IT to that course. they all came back MCSE certified after they tested, one had to retest and the school/company we sent them to said that if he did not pass a third time they would refund all testing fees.

      are they better? nope. you can't certify troubleshooting skills. and you CAN crank out people to pass certifications quite easily by teaching th
    • What I do not like about MCSE's is that they make you memorize mouse clicks. Yes I did the NT4 track.

      Busineses see that and avoid MCSE's like the plague and assume it makes you know less.

      Cisco on the other hand is the best. No questions. Just a lab of a fucked up network and they tell you to fix it and what they want out of it.

      You have to fix it yourself and apply all your skills.

      I think shell scripting should be required since the world does not use mouse clicks to do everything.

      Perhaps write a script

  • It's just marketing (Score:3)

    by Fiz Ocelot ( 642698 ) <baelzharon.gmail@com> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:26PM (#9499917)
    It's the same thing with any product specific "certification". These people will be much more comfortable with RH, so they will go with RH. It's merely a marketing tool.

    But for organizations which are already depending on RH, this can be a way of telling them that a person has some qualifications.

    Frankly I don't like it. I'd rather have someone that can use any distro out there and understands the basic concepts of linux that basically stay true with all distros.

  • This is to address the distro-lock vs. distro-free certifications.

    I've passed both the RHCE and the LPI certifications, and I have to say the RHCE was by _far_ a much more robust and difficult test of my Linux knowledge than the LPI exam.

    As has been stated, the RHCE is given by Red Hat for individuals to use Red Hat products, so it's not surprising that they teach the "Red Hat" way. But there's two things to consider there:
    • Red Hat is the market share leader for North American corporate installs. If you'
  • Anyone smart enough to master RedHat or any other distribution, should be able to adapt their skills elsewhere in the Linux world and beyond in a matter of weeks. (by mastering RedHat, I mean really understand how things work and not just use their GUIs, they're not a requirement to use the system, you know).

    Every ape should be able to learn system administation with a home network and some good documentation on his own. The way I view the certifications, they are just one of several ways to prove that yo

  • The Novell Side (Score:2, Informative)

    by khankell ( 410682 )
    Maybe slightly off-topic, but after I RTFA'd, I was astounded by the position Brunson has taken with the Novell CLE. Having studied the material and scheduled a test in about two weeks, I can honestly say that:

    1) You don't need to have the LPIC 1 to sign up for the test. They recommend that you have the level of skills equivalent to the LPIC 1 because they might ask you to write a cron job that backs up critical files for eDirectory. You can go in cold with no LPI experience, but don't complain if some
  • can lock administrators in to Red Hat-specific skills.

    Of course! If you want education -- go to a real school...

  • A good, very portable training program (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Random BedHead Ed ( 602081 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @08:09PM (#9501528) Homepage Journal

    I think the Red Hat certs are very useful, and even portable. The test is surprisingly hard; you can know your stuff and still fail, but you can't possibly pass if you're not very familiar with Linux. I took the RHCE exam this past Friday. And passed. Which was a relief, because I failed it the first time.

    RHCE is definitely a test about doing things. You can't read the guides they give you and be done with it. Studying involves setting up every service and configuration they discuss in class, and remembering how to do it in the absence of your notes. Because there is no multiple choice. It's all "Fix your system," and "Configure your system to do the following."

    There is some stuff in the RHCE curriculum that is RH-specific, but I think that would be true regardless of what sort of test you take. And it doesn't amount to much: most of the skills are VERY portable. OK, maybe RPM is not used by every distro, and maybe the installer is RH-specific. And I know, KDE is in the wrong directory. But where things differ, it's never too hard to figure it out. I've done plenty of things I learned in these classes on other distros. Of course there are also a lot of Red Hat utilities you can use to configure services, but they're not really taught in class, believe it or not. Red Hat recommends that students learn the command line way of doing things first. Most admins don't use the GUI config tools, so RH pretty much skips them.

    I'd imagine the Architect curriculum must be pretty good, based upon my RHCE experience. Particularly the "Directory Services and Authentication" class, which would be useful if you wanted to do clever things with Samba/LDAP/Kerberos.

  • bs (Score:2)

    by ananke ( 8417 )
    I got my RHCE last year [thanks to my employer, big .edu]. In my current job I manage almost 200 slackware machines. Guess what, I've learned some new things at the RHCE training, and during the exam I didn't use almost any redhat specific tools. In fact, RHCE training was one of the better courses I've had in a long time.
  • There must not be any AIA (American Intitute of Architects) memebers reading slashdot right now, as I'm sure that they will land on this with a ton of bricks.

    Architects are far more organized when it comes to lobby $$$ to protect the Architect designation, and most states already have laws on the books protecting the Architect designation. Microsoft who has, AFAIK, only lost over the MCSE "Engineer" title in Ontario took on the disorganized Professional Engineering industry. Archtects are far more flush w

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