Red Hat Certified Engineer - Exam (Course or no Course?)

[SoX2000]

Hi All,

I was looking for a bit of advice. I'm looking to take the RHCE exam. I have 2 years experience running CentOS servers is roles such as LAMP servers, apache web servers, squid proxies, samba servers and iscsi targets. I also use Fedora extensively at home. (Overcoming countless problems on the way).

I was wondering whether I should take the whole 5 day course and then the exam or just take the exam (with study from Michael Jang's book and practice systems). My thinking is, even if I fail first time I can still take the exam a second time and save money not taking the course. £1700 is a lot of money for me (well anyone). And I can possibly take the exam (~£500) three times and it would still be cheaper than the whole course plus exam. I reckon if I failed first time of taking just the exam (which I hope not) then I'd know more about the set out of the exam to pass it a second time round.

I don't believe there is a rule stating you cannot take the exam more than twice in a given time. Correct me if I'm wrong.

So, drilling down to the bedrock of my post. Is the 5 day course worth the £1200? Or should I just jump straight in (with a lot of home study of course) and just take the exam?

Regards,
Antonio

[Lakshmipathi]

Though I'm not an RHCE professional,Few months back I was thinking about taking RH exams.
I was in your position - (I have been using linux from 2003) Whether to join a course or take exams without course. (Courses are costly )

I have tested my level of experience,using their pre-assessment questionnaires redhat.com | Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)

And it was really helpful (I know I'm week in networking stuff,the test confirmed it)

So you could test your skill there and then improve them and take exams with out course.

My thinking is, even if I fail first time I can still take the exam a second time and save money not taking the course

Since you have the second chance, As some one said, "success is never final and failure never fatal - it's courage that counts " .

All the best

[ajithkumarsl]

Hi,

I have done my RHCE in RHEL4 on Feb 2006.

My opinion is that if you need to get good percentage in the exams we need to go through the proper training.

Of course the experience matters but how to approach the exams we need some body to guide through.

If the RHCE certification give you a good backup in your job..I believe there is no problem to invest money for that..

Best of luck for your future..

Regards,
Ajith

[vishesh]

Hi

I think just go through RHCE books (provided by redhat). i just done exercises of that book (of source i have 3 years experience in linux) and completed RHCE.

thanks