RHCE – Day 1

Before starting this series, I want to tell you a boring story about myself. The story begins at 2000 when I was a high school student making web design/programming to earn my pocket money:) These days I recognised a web page called Brainbench which makes online exams for certification. I passed their exam to get ceritified for HTML 4.0

From that point on, I really understood the necessity of certification because the preparation process gives you much more then the paper you earn at the end. After that, my next step was MCSE 2000. I remember that I was studying the exam on my Intel Pentium 133 running Win2k like a turtle. The preparation phase was funny but in the end as an high school student I didn’t have enough money to pay for the exam fees, so unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to be MCSE at that age :(

And then comes the collage years. This time I have a new target : Networking and Cisco Certifications. And now I have enough money coming from the scholarships ;-) After 3 years of self paced and computer based preparation and with the help of Boson Netsim and Dynamips I passed all the exams (In total 5) that are necessary for CCNA & CCNP + 1 for CCIP (QoS Exam)

After graduating from school I applied a job in a big telco vendor. They were so suprised to see a new graduate with CCNA, CCNP.  As there were a lot of paper certified people around, they want to verify this. After a very long technical interview they got convinced and hired me. 

Certification has great importance in my life. I found certification as a great tool to advance expertise about technical areas. Currently I have IWA HTML 4.0, CCNA, CCNP, CCIP, MCTS Windows Server 2008 Active Directory: Configuration, MCTS Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure: Configuration, MCTS Windows Server Virtualization Hyper-V and MCITP : Windows 2008 Server Admin. All of these certification tacks helped me build knowledge on varios technologies in a very proper way. But will I stop ? Of course not :) Next step is RHCE (RedHat Certified Engineer)

Why RHCE ?

- As a network and system admin the middleware I was working on is mostly UNIX based (Redhat, Solaris, Secureplatform etc..) I have enough hands on and expertise but I don’t have a real proof.
- My interview with Google reminded me the importance of Linux again.
- RHCE is lab based not one of these paper certifications.
- One of the most recognised certification by the industry.

Enough pep talk let’s begin. First the preparation materials :

1. RHEL 5 Unleashed by Tommy Fox
2. RHCE Red Hat Certified Engineer Linux Study Guide (Exam RH302), Fifth Edition byMichael Jang 
3. Slides from RH033, RH133, RH253 Classes

and the tools :

1. VmWare Workstation/Server for my laptop prep.
2. Vmware ESXi for the lab. (maybe also Hyper-V with RH Integration tools)

and of course RHEL5 iso from RHN and a new wallpaper for motivation :D

http://spinix.deviantart.com/art/LINUX-CCCP-84492543

Installation Methods

CD/DVD-ROM : Classical method for installing
Hard Disk : Requires an HD partition(xt2/3,vfat) accessible by the installer.
Network Install : NFS, FTP or HTTP based using PXE/Boot.iso
Kickstart : Unattended method of installation

NOTE : Boot.iso file can be located under RHELInstall CD1 / DVD ./images folder. 

In order to choose for an installation method use “linux askmethod” at the boot prompt

 

 

 

 

Install Phases :

- Select Language
- Select Keyboard Layout
- Installation number. (This allows us to use additional components like virtualization)
- Partition layout and RAID

IMPORTANT NOTE : If /boot or /boot/efi is a RAID. It must be RAID1.

- GRUB (Boot loader) config
- Network Config
- Packages to be installed

After Install those 2 files are created :

1. /root/install.log   --   Install Log File
2. /root/anaconda-ks.cfg   --   Sample Kickstart File based on the parameters used during the installation. I will examine this file in a future session.

Yes I know this was a less technical more personal session but next days  I will enrich the content and add more notes about my preparation track. Hope to see you in the next part of the RHCE series.