Ok, so today, I have learned I need to get on a regular schedule and really develop good study habits for this before the test, this will entail :

• Getting to bed on time at a decent hour (10:30 PM)
• Getting up early (6AM) to start my mind working quickly, and making the best use of my time
• Practice each day, 6 days per week, 2-3 hours per day
• Documenting(Blogging) my practice attempts, and my failures as well
• Try to not let ANYTHING interrup this schedule
• Eat right, and exercise regularly (of course)
• Try to lay off the coffee, too much makes me jittery

I'd tried to take the RHCE for RHEL5 about 4 yeatrs ago. The class was "not really meant for an RHCE exam" , but was moreso over the 'differences between RHEL4 nd RHEL5', but included was a free test attempt at the end of the week for RHCE. The test was intimidating, to say the least, I think at least half of our engineers failed, lots og good engineers. From what I remember though, the test being all hands on, and presented with a simple sheet of paper, do these 12 objectives, there seemed to be at least three basic methods to the test that people attempted to utilize to resolve.

1. A new installation is done, so many people in order to save time, went into the installer, details, and configured various serivces that way as part of the install (i.e. building additional partitions, filesystems)
2. Confiogure services via the Redhat GNOME Desktop. This is not my preferred method, as the hardened build of RHEL that my company uses for servers, doesn't even include a desktop
3. Configure services and make changes via command line . My preferred method

Going to try and do more and will report on chapter 1, have to kill it tonight

Study Guide for the RHCSA and RHCE exams

I am taking the RHCE exam for RHEL6 at the end of June. This blog will be my notes, personal study guide, and practice lab recordings until then.

I have bought and am reading two books :

1. RHCSA / RHCE Red Hat Linux Certification Study Guide -  Sixth Edition
2. Hands-on Guide to the Red Hat Exams: RHCSA and RHCE Cert Guide and Lab Manual 

My testing and 'home lab' systems will include :

• I am using VMware Server (2.0) which is a free download at the WMware website .

• I have a desktop PC that is running Windows XP - SP 3 (Yes, old, 3 hard drives in it, so a lot of disk space available .)
• A corporate HP laptop running Windows 7.0 64 bit with Intel i7 processors, w 8 GB memmory
• My personal Toshiba laptop running Windows 7.0 64 bit, QUAD Core AMD A6 processors  w 4 GB memory
• I also have a number of lab VM's to create on demand in the company lab. The drawback here is that we are using a corporate RHEL6 image without a desktop, that has many modifications to the RHEL6 image for security purposes explicitly for server usage only .

Getting started, post chapter 1 notes today.