On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 03:20:49PM -0700, Bryan J. Smith wrote: > I had recruiters have me take these many times. They > explicitly had me pledge not to do so.
I would consider that a mistake on their part when the test is designed to a large part to test your ability to solve problems with the tools you have access to. > Such questions are the lowest form of Bloom's. They should > be avoided or minimized in such tests. There are better ways > to test such concepts than with options. They seem awfully common on the few tests I have taken, but hopefully they are getting better in the last few years. > Some would, and could, argue that even the RHCE does that. > Hell, screw up SELinux, and you could get a big fat 0 on the > second part of the RHCE, regardless of what else you did. Some people even question the usefulness of SElinux. I have never had a need to deal with it yet, although I imagine some day I might have to look at it. > I've had several clients asking for the RHCA. That > requires passing 5 exams at the 400 level (after the > single 300 level RHCE). > > Now that the RHCDS is here, and it only requires 3 exams > after the RHCE (instead of 5 like the RHCA), several clients > are starting to use that as a "differential." So by asking for specific certifications they exclude lots of excellent people. Hopefully those excellent people have plenty of work though as they likely do. I can see from a risk management point of view that picking the person with the certification seems safer. > Oh, I don't know, maybe perhaps ... > > 1. Deployment, Virtualization, and Systems Management > 2. Directory Services and Authentication > 3. Clustering and Storage Management > > Which is basically ... > > 1. Provision, deploy and manage systems, including virtual > 2. Centralize authentication, users, systems and other objects > 3. Manage access to and the storage itself, including clusters > > I just read off the Red Hat Certified Datacenter Specialist > (RHCDS). There is a _huge_ difference being able to manage > a RHEL system (RHCT), plus services (RHCE), and being able > to manage a datacenter. ;) Of course this doesn't mean you can't be a better admin for such a system than someone with the certification. I guess it is just simpler to hire someone that has been tested to a certain standard since you ought to be getting at least that much, rather than having to figure out the complete value of an unknown person. > Companies are using Xen paravirt. Companies do deploy > Red Hat Network (RHN) Satellite (and don't just use the > Internet hosted RHN service), as well as various, emerging > technologies (ET) that Red Hat is integrating into it. > Companies (and entire governments/military branches ;) deploy > Red Hat Directory and Certificate Services. And companies > do really rely on clusters on RHEL, both native and 3rd party > (which have underlying components still provided by RHEL). > > You asked. I'm not saying "Red Hat is great." I'm answering > the question you had. And that's before we even look at the > SELinux-specific exams, tuning exam (which is damn fine for > Linux in general -- highly recommend the RH442 course, even > if you don't have a RHCE, you can sit it, just not the EX442 > exam), etc... I am sure redhat does provide very useful support and services that many organizations like. I have no interest in them anymore personally. > You can't worry about them. Inhibit them, yes. But worry? > They sign an agreement. When they cheat, they compromise > everything the certification means for them, especially to > themselves. > > Only once did I have to "read the riot act" to some people > in my Differential Equations class. Really pissed me off > when they merely didn't hurt the curve, but felt like they > discredited the institution I attended -- which, at all other > times, I never saw any cheating whatsoever. Yep cheaters can tarnish the reputation of the institution. > If an exam took all week, it would be at least $5,000, if > not $10,000. Basically figure $1,000 for every 4 hours. $250/hour? Still sounds insane. > LPIC doesn't focus on training. Right, it leaves that to others. > Red Hat charges around $750 to sit their 4-6 hour exams. > That covers the real cost of the 1-2 system you will have > in front of you, the facilities, etc... Which makes sense for a hands on test (which I believe the redhat ones tend to be). -- Len Sorensen _______________________________________________ lpi-examdev mailing list [email protected] http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-examdev
