As of last Friday afternoon, I am a Red Hat Certified System Administrator.

It was my first time taking a certification exam that was 100% practical and I was really nervous going into it. You at least can get things right by chance if it's a multiple-choice question, but there was no such chance here. Thankfully, I studied and knew how to find what extra info I needed during the exam via the man pages. I passed with a score of 286 out of a possible 300 (with 210 being the cut-off).

Exam rules mean that I can't discuss any of the details of the exam. That's a shame because I wanted to share the anecdote of spending the last 40 minutes on a single task because of an issue related to the man pages for a particular tool. I'll share what I think is most important for anyone who might be considering the exam themselves: my study methods.

• Before I began studying for the exam, I had several years of using Arch Linux as my primary OS for my desktop and laptop. I was already very comfortable with using the command line to do things. Additionally, I had several months of work-related experience with RHEL specifically.
• I used the EX200 Study Guide from Pearson by Sander van Vugt. I skipped most of the end-of-chapter questions in favor of the labs and practice tests. What questions I did have, I allowed myself to use man pages to answer them without counting it as cheating.
• I didn't study a lot per week but tried to practice things where I could with a mix of Anki and a set of VMs.

Next on the list: RHCE.