So after having used Linux for 15 years at home, I have taken the opportunity for a career change and I am studying for RHCSA with a view to becoming a Linux sysadmin. I appreciate that other skills are an asset but I have not worked professionally in this field before and need to start somewhere. I have identified the RH certs as the core/basic ones to have. As those of you on this sub will know, Red Hat offer courses covering this material but they are quite brief- 5 days for the fast track or 9 days overall for the standard version- and expensive. Because of this, at the moment I am studying on my own to ensure that I have at least some familiarity with all parts of the curriculum before I proceed further.
I am using Sander van Vugt’s Red Hat RHCSA/RHCE 7 Cert Guide: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (EX200 and EX300) (Certification Guide). Previously I was using his online video course and got about 1/3 way through. Unfortunately I found that there was a lot missing from the video lessons that I had to research independently but is covered in the book, so I have started again with that.
The thing is, that as I go through I am wondering whether it would actually be worthwhile to attend the taught courses at a college at all. I have been averaging 1.5 days/chapter at 4 hours/day and there are 26 chapters to cover the syllabus. This means that I would notionally take 156 hours to complete the syllabus on my own. I appreciate that a tutor will be able to explain things in a more tailored and applicable way but at most the 9 days courses will only comprise 72 hours. This means that there will be little time to go into things in any detail, and especially if I am studying with other students then I expect that it will be mostly cramming. I have done a cramming course once before when I did PRINCE2 Foundation and to be honest I can’t say I really learned anything from it apart from memorising the answers. I am self funding and although I have the funds, I am not keen to spend £4000 to attend a crammer when I can take my time to study independently and do the exam for 1/10 the cost.I have found that mere repetition does not help me learn or understand and that it is far more helpful for me to know, for instance, what single-character command arguments ‘stand for’, e.g. -v for ‘inverse’, although this is often not covered in the course material directly.
What are the thoughts of others on this sub? Is it worthwhile attending the taught classes or is solo study sufficient to prepare for RHCSA exam?
Thanks
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