Certification and Training
The certifications offered by some vendors are backed up by training programmes. Indeed, there are some companies (I won’t mention any names) for whom certification is no more than a marketing tool to get bums on seats in training rooms. Typically, these companies won’t let you take the exams unless you’ve attended the courses. LPI is very different; it doesn’t offer training at all, and is quite happy for you to selfstudy and just take the exams. (I have always taken certifications this way.)
Having said that, LPI has a vigorous program of partnerships with training providers throughout the world through its ATP (Approved Training Partner) and AAP (Approved Acedemic Partner) programs. For some years the LPI also insisted that these partners submit their training materials for approval, but this requirement has now been dropped. Firebrand is one of about a dozen such training partners in the UK. Their entire focus is on training towards certification (whether it be LPI, Prince2, Microsoft MCSE or many others).
Rather than pay for a training course, you may prefer to just use a book as a study guide. A search on Amazon for “Linux Certification” delivers rich pickings, though I have personal experience of only one of these – the O’Reilly title LPI Certification in a Nutshell. This book is tightly coupled to the LPI exam objectives, but be aware that it covers only LPI level 1 and that its most recent edition is 2010, and the exam objectives have been revised since then. (This is a common issue for printed study guides.)
Red Hat has a vigorous training program to go with its vigorous certification program. The flowchart (right) shows just the mainstream courses that lead to the RHCSA and RHCE certifications. Following the ‘official’ route through these (courses RH124, RH135 and RH255) will consume three full weeks of your life and set you back a cool £5,961 if you pay full price for classroom training. (Online training is slightly cheaper, and you can buy training vouchers that might save you a few percent.) One of the larger training companies, QA Training, offers a full portfolio of Red Hat courses, based both on the official Red Hat material and independently authored content. Again, study guides offer a much cheaper route; I would particularly recommend Asghar Ghori’s book RedHat Certified System Administrator and Engineer, although it is based on RHEL6, not 7, so is already falling slightly out of date.
Historically, the Linux Foundation’s training has been very developer and kernel focused, with courses like ‘Developing Linux Device Drivers’ and ‘Linux Kernel Internals’. More recently they’ve expanded their portfolio with courses on Linux System Administration, KVM Virtualisation, OpenStack Cloud Architecture and Deployment, and a number of others.
I must confess that although I have taken (and passed) RHCE, Novell CLP and LPI certification exams, I have never paid a penny to attend training. My approach has always been to study the objectives carefully and then simply go out and practise doing what it says you should be able to do. Install apache. Serve some content. Set up access controls. Break it. Fix it again. Then do it all over again. I found that writing down my own little command summaries and procedure flowcharts was a huge aid to memory. My time spent teaching in classrooms has also helped shape my trouble-shooting skills – you’d be amazed by the ingenuity students display in doing lab exercises wrong ...