Greetings guys,

I have just earned my LPIC-1 cert this month and I'm currently searching for what to do next. I know that the Redhat exams have more "prestige" in the industry, since they are performance-based, but in my case there are 2 issues:

1) No server has RHEL installed in my current job, i.e. I will see the OS in action only as a virtual machine on my laptop.
2) I can't find any information about an exam center in the Cyprus/Greece areas. Most probably I will have to fly to another European country in order to take the tests.

These are the main reasons why I have almost decided to go on with LPIC-2 and if the chance arrives, then proceed with the Redhat exams.

What do you think?

Hi there,

Thats true that RedHat certs has got a good reputation being performance based exams. For your two issues that are setting you back, here are my suggestions:

1. Create a lab in VMware or Virtual box and practice on that, this will help you to check the functioning of DNS, DHCP, Samba, FTP, HTTP, NIS, LDAP etc. You will encounter many issues while configuring which will in turn help in enhancing your troubleshooting skills.
2. Here is the link that you might useful: http://www.europe.redhat.com/about/contact/#GTI

I hope this helps.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi T3RM1NVT0R,

thank you for your quick reply!

1. The VirtualBox lab is what I thought, also. Since RHEL is a commercial distro, which do you think is the best free alternative? Fedora, CentOS or something else?

2. Thank you for the link! Israel is close to Cyprus, so even if I have to fly to take the exams, it will be a short trip!

Hi cthugr,

I prefer CentOS but there are other rebuilds available as well like Fedora, Scientific Linux.

You can download CentOS from here: http://iso.linuxquestions.org/centos/

If you work with RedHat stuff then RHCSA/RHCE seems the obvious choice else, do LPIC exams until the need arises to do somthing with RedHat.

Dear cthugr,

If you do choose to go for the RHCSA, and would rather not pay the subscription fee for RHEL 6, stick with a rebuild such as Scientific Linux or CentOS. (Scientific Linux and CentOS use the RHEL 6 source code released by Red Hat under open source licenses.) While Fedora is an excellent distribution, it isn't as good for this purpose. There are differences in the source code used by Red Hat to build Fedora.

For virtualization, I strongly recommend KVM. It's what's included with RHEL 6. The RHCSA objectives include five items related to virtualization.

(edit: sorry mods, I just realized that this is an old thread...)