RHCE

[Christopher Chan]

Chadley Wilson wrote:
> Dear friends,
> 
> My company has decided to send me for Linux training. The boss wants me
> to do the relevant training to bring our company up to speed with IBM
> and and other major PC brands that are selling Linux on there PCs for
> end users.
> 
> So I did some research and the outcome was to do the course through
> Obsidian systems in South Africa (Where I live).
> They are offering the Redhat Certified Engineer(RHCE),Supposed to be one
> of the top IT qualifications.

RHCE will make sure you get the basic requirements to support and 
administer a Unix box with a slant on RedHat style system configuration.

>  
> Now the boss wants to know how to tell if this is the the correct
> course.
> And he wants to know if we shouldn't maybe go down the SUSE route.
> 
> My question is a difficult one because I need to justify and prove prior
> to actually going on the course that RHCE would be the right way to go.
> I have already mentioned that RedHat base platforms are by far more
> widely supported than any other distro and that FC will be the best for
> us to use on our our hardware because it is very configurable and has
> such great hardware support.
> But one has to bear in mind that I am trying to explain this to a person
> who has no idea of computers and operating systems let alone Linux.
> 
> Could some one point me in the direction of some good justifications for
> my choice? or point me in a new direction altogether.
> Either way, I have just got to give him a very convincing answer. 

Whatever training you get, you will need to either 1) read the manuals 
and get it done or 2) failing 1 you will need to be able to find a 
proper support channel like this list or a more related list (eg: qmail 
list for qmail, postfix list for postfix, tomcat user list for tomcat).

What the training should do for you is enable you to understand what is 
involved in administering a Unix box and help you to learn to be able to 
pick the skills and or knowledge needed to identify and solve a problem.

Otherwise, you're just stuck to what you memorized (meaning not 
understanding...just that you know need to do this when you see that) 
from the training which is pretty pointless.

The full RHCE course is pretty broad (not just RH300) from what I see 
but I only took the final one (RH 300) and while I did learn a few 
things, the benefits of the training is going to come from being able to 
try to use and build on them...which is going to be tough if you are 
relying just on these to handle production environments.

Basically, any training you get only goes so far and so if you plan to 
use RH products, then take the RHCE courses to 'cram' more 
concepts/tricks in since this will be likely the only time you get to 
have somebody take you by the hand. Remember to try to use what you 
learn as much as you can and build on them. Help is always available in 
the open-source world. If you run into a problem or need advice, find an 
appropriate list and post.

Christopher
RHCE