Red Hat EX200: Exam topics

The EX200 certification exam covers 10 main topics that you need to master before taking the test. Thus, you should know the following details of the exam content:

• Deploying, Configuring, and Maintaining Systems

  For this subject, you need to have skills in scheduling tasks using cron and at, configuring the time service clients, working with package module streams, as well as starting and stopping services and configuring them to start automatically at boot. It is also essential to know how to modify the system bootloader and configure systems to boot into a specific target automatically. Your ability to update and install software packages from a remote repository, Red Hat Network, or from the local file system will also define your overall result.

• Configuring Local Storage

  This topic will test your skills in creating and deleting logical volumes, adding new partitions and logical volumes, swapping to a system non-destructively, and assigning physical volumes to volume groups. It is also important to know how to create, list, and delete partitions on GPT and MBR disks as well as how to configure systems to mount the file systems at boot by universally UUID or label.

• Managing Containers

  This topic is all about your skills in running a service inside a container, attaching persistent storage to a container, and inspecting container images. A potential candidate needs to know how to perform basic container management, such as starting, running, listing, and stopping running containers, and container management with the use of commands, including skopeo and podman. If you know about finding and retrieving the container images from a remote registry, you will be also able to get a higher score during the test.

• Creating Simple Shell Scripts

  This section covers your full understanding of the usage of Looping constructs to process file and command-line input, script inputs, output of shell commands within a script, and shell command exit codes. Also, you should know how to conditionally execute code.

• Managing Basic Networking

  The subtopics of this objective include your understanding of how to configure hostname resolution, IPv4 & IPv6 addresses, and network services to start automatically at boot. Your skills in restricting network access with the use of firewall-cmd/firewall are also one of the important abilities to possess.

• Creating and Configuring File Systems

  To succeed in this objective, you need to have expertise in configuring disk compression, extending existing logical volumes, managing layered storage, as well as diagnosing and correcting file permission problems. You should also know how to mount and unmount network file systems with the use of NFS, configure and create the set-GID directories, and have the ability to mount, create, use, and unmount ext4, xfs, and vfat file systems.

• Understanding and Using Essential Tools

  In this domain, it is important to know how to use regular and grep expressions to analyze text, create soft and hard links, use input-output redirection, and log in the users and switch them in multiuser targets. It also includes your expertise in accessing the remote systems with the use of SSH and shell prompt and issue commands with correct syntax. Your ability to unpack, compress, uncompress, and archive files with the use of star, tar, bzip2, and gzip will be crucial.

• Managing Users and Groups

  The domain covers your skills in creating, deleting, and modifying local groups, group memberships, and local user accounts. If you know how to configure superuser access and adjust password aging and change passwords for local user accounts, you will be able to answer the questions from this area.

• Managing Security

  In this section, there will be the evaluation of your knowledge of how to list and identify process context and SELinux file, address and diagnose routine SELinux policy violations, and use boolean settings to modify system SELinux settings. You need to know about the configuration of firewall settings with the use of firewall-cmd/firewalld and key-based authentication for SSH as well. Restoring default file contexts and setting the enforcing and permissive modes for SELinux are also the skills you should have.

• Operating Running Systems

  This area requires that you have knowledge of how to manage tuning profiles, preserve system journals, securely transfer files between systems, and adjust process scheduling. You will be able to answer the questions related to the interruption of the boot process in order to gain access to a system, identification of the memory/CPU intensive processes and killing of these processes, as well as adjustment of the process scheduling. This domain also evaluates your knowledge of how to shut down, boot, and reboot a system normally.

Skills Tested in the Exam

The Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) exam is practical and contains real-world tasks. The skills tested in EX200 cover one’s understanding and the ability to use essential tools as well as competence in creating simple shell scripts and operating running systems. Also, one should be able to perform the configuration of local storage and file systems. Among other things, you will have to demonstrate sufficient knowledge in deploying and maintaining systems and managing basic networking. Besides, you will need to be ready to perform tasks on security and containers management without any assistance.

Reference: https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/ex200-red-hat-certified-system-administrator-rhcsa-exam