Linux Certification

Question

Which Linux Certification would you best recommend? LPI, Novell or Redhat

Answer 1

Hi Taz,

It depends what level you at and what you want to achieve. I suggest going for a distro independent qualification like LPI first. There is no doubt that the Redhat cert is seen as the "gold medal" when it comes to Linux certs but its expensive and one needs to have some experience to be able to pass the exam.

Novell is also good. It is a outcomes based exam with a server that you need to configure same as Redhat. Novell doesn't have the same rep as Redhat yet so would go for it if you do a lot of work with Suse boxen.

Answer 2

Depends on what you want. Companies that run RedHat will like you having a RedHat certification; same for Novell. LPI seems more generic to me.

With the indeed.com jobtrends tool you can see the jobtrends for each certification: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=linux+and+LPI%2C+linux+and+RHCE%2C+linux+and+NCLE&l=

RHCE seems to be the most common.

Answer 3

As someone who hires administrators at the senior level, I recommend:

none of the above

If I'm interviewing you, its going to take an hour or more and you'll be seated in front of a few machines. During that hour, believe me, I'll discover your understanding of what you're hoping to work with. Don't worry, you'll be using keyboards, not pen and paper. My challenges will be disconcerting enough, I want to see how you react as you would if doing the job.

I stopped giving preference to most certs about two years ago, they are just too easy to obtain. As someone hiring, I can say that the only edge they would give you is a demonstrated investment in your field. We use a mix of everything, plus our own home brewed distributions.

If you get to the interview, its because your resume does not rely on papers that say what you can do, your resume shows what you have done. Don't focus on one distro, know your way around C and a few scripting languages, don't argue the 'best way' of doing anything is using a specific distro and you'll do well. Novell and Red Hat are vendors to us, not decision makers. Don't buy into marketing hype that says 'we're the best!'. If I recall correctly, they all say that. Best for what? What are you trying to accomplish? Try to ignore the ever present marketing FUD and learn how various groups actually use a Linux based OS. Have you tried to build packages on dis-similar distributions? What happens if we use RHEL but our firewalls are Debian and your job is to roll updates in trivial repositories? What happens if a choice of distro comes from a manager who has never written a line of code in their life?

I expect you to learn on the job, not to panic and back peddle when someone says 'debhelper'.

Demonstrated knowledge of how Linux actually uses memory and the knobs to control such behavior is also mandatory. What's the difference between O_DIRECT and posix_m/fadvise(), considering that some relational databases use O_DIRECT in their configuration files? How do you control paging/swappiness? How can a process prevent the OOM killer from getting it? None of the above requires programming knowledge, just an understanding of how the kernel actually works.

An addendum, I do give weight to people who hold (and maintain) their RHCA (RHCE being required to get one) .. but still the proof is what you do in an interview when I take your package manager away or tell you to find the daemon that is leaking memory.

Don't put on blinders that cost a fortune unless your tuning your resume to a very specific job .. in which case, you may have shot subsequent opportunities in the foot.

Edit:

If you can demonstrate that you learn and work well with others through previous participations in F/LOSS projects, you might get hired even if your aptitude tests did not go so well. The point is, I want someone who thinks, learns and gets stuff done. If you present me with some cert and wonder why I'm grilling you .. I can only say:

NEXT ...

Answer 4

Hi, I believe that you should go for Red hat Linux certification as that is more prominent in terms of your career growth and that pays you good in terms of salary also.

John