RHCSA 7 Exam Presentation
The RHCSA exam (Red Hat Certified System Administrator), also called EX200, is a performance-based exam lasting 2 hours and half, focusing on installation and server configuration on RHEL 7 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7).
You can take the exam in a classroom setting monitored by a proctor or in a Individual Exam Session (IES) remotely monitored. A FAQ about IES is available on the Red Hat website.
Red Hat provides a FAQ about its certification program and one about the Red Hat Learning Subscription service (RHLS).
Red Hat exams are covered by a NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement): anybody taking an exam can’t talk about it. For this reason, all quiz or sample exams in this website are based on exam objectives and not on real questions, even though the level of difficulty is similar.
After taking the exam and in the next three days, you will receive an email with your result (the pass mark is 210 out of 300). But you will never know what part you succeeded or what part you failed!
Additional Resources
Here you will find the following resources:
- an overview of the Red Hat certification path,
- a help to choose what Linux distribution to install,
- some general information about certifications,
- the list of the RHCSA 7 objectives with their associated tutorials,
- the main differences with the previous version of the RHCSA exam,
- some RHCSA 7 requirements not listed in the objectives,
- a RHCSA 7 quiz to help you memorize some topics,
- a RHCSA 7 sample exam to get prepared for the big day,
- some test-taking techniques provided by Sander van Vugt.
You can use this website like a study guide if you’ve got already some basic Linux experiences.
RHCSA 7 Prices
For your information, here are the latest known Red Hat RHCSA 7 exam prices on March 16, 2016 per country (previous prices are between parenthesis):
- United States/Canada: $400
- Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland): €500 (€470)
- Europe (Ireland, Italy, Spain): €450 (€400)
- Europe (Czech Republic, Lithuania, Portugal): €420 (€380)
- Australia: AUD 650 (inc GST) (AUD 715)
- China: 2,100 CNY
- Hong-Kong: 1,680 HKD
- Indonesia: 2,700,000 IDR
- Israel: $500
- Japan: 36,000 JPY (excl.tax)
- Korea: ₩280,000 (140,000 KRW)
- Mexico: $550
- New Zealand: 700 NZD
- Philippines: 14,000 PHP
- Singapore: 700 SGD
- South Africa: $500
- Taiwan: 6,800 TWD
- Thailand: 15,000 THB
- UAE: $500
- United Kingdom: £450 excl tax (£410)
Source: http://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/ex200-red-hat-certified-system-administrator-rhcsa-exam
Concerning prices – worth mentioning that in US/Canada price 400$ goes with all taxes included, meanwhile in Europe (France at least) you pay additional 50 euros for VAT. Which comes out at 500 euros in total for exam
Interesting. Thanks.
New price for Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland): €470
I just updated the page. Thank you very much.
I just wanted to thank u for putting all this information together! Passed my exam these days @ Zurich, Switzerland. Maybe i`ll come back for RHCE. <3 Certdepot.net
I’m glad for you.
Just to say thank you to certdepot and the people who added their comments and suggestions here. It certainly helped passing my RHCSA 7 exam.
Congratulations! I’m very happy for you.
Thanks CertDepot 🙂
The RHCSA exam cost of £450 in the United Kingdom is without VAT, what makes it £540 in total when VAT is added.
Thanks for this information.
Hi,
I have asked this question before but couldn’t find it anywhere. So I am asking it again and I hope you’ll help me in this regard.
I am trying to appear for the exam in my country Pakistan, but unfortunately there are no exams scheduled here from last few years.
Currently, I am tired and upset finding out the right place to go because most of the companies in Asia who conduct exams/training listed on Redhat website contains outdated information about them (which means most the companies are no longer operational)
There is no chance of finding the authorized center online in Asia.””
I am now interested to go to DUBAI as one of the company named ‘Sitespower’ claims to be authorized and is listed on redhat website.
How do I trust them?
Where did you appear for the exam? And all other members in this website?
Who should I contact to help me in this matter?
Please help. Thank you
You should contact an official Red Hat representative.
If you are on Twitter, you can send a tweet to @RedHat_Training
Hello,
I am new in linux world and planning for RHCSA exam. I will be thankful if anyone can suggest me good learning material for beginners to prepare for the exam of RHCSA. I am looking forward your kind reply.
I keep a review of the best available books on the subject at http://www.pmsas.pr.gov.br/wp-content/?id=certdepot-EX200&exam=rhel7-book-review/. Ghori‘s book and the new edition of Jang‘s book are the best ones for Linux beginners.
I just pass my exam thanks for the help
You’re welcome!
Congrats. I just failed mine yesterday unfortunately. Odd thing is, I felt more comfortable submitting the exam than I did going in. Even had time to double check everything. Just a bit shocking because I really don’t know where to go from here since they do not tell you what areas you failed in.
Yes, I agree that not telling you what you didn’t correctly configure is not the best way to improve yourself.
Hi Cert-depot,
For both the attempts the virtual window after a reboot configuring LVM and swap closed and re-appeared –but the comment was “Booting from Hard disk”
It was still remaining hang for 40 mins, I checked with the examiner–he said problem is on my side.
So far 3 times consecutively I got 0%—why?
Where could I do wrong?
I don’t know.
You should retry the last operations that you did in a KVM lab to see what could be the reason:
– syntax error in the /etc/fstab file,
– wrong partitioning size with or without overlap,
– wrong type of partition,
– error when disabling/enabling the swap partition/logical volume,
– etc.
Hi,
I did my exam today and got the same result.
The last question was to create an lv and mount it. I added it into /etc/fstab and did a mount -a. All mounted successfully no syntax errors. When i did the reboot it was stuck at Booting from Hard Disk. I was there for 40mins trying to get support from person on kiosk chat or redhat person. They did not help, they said it was me.
I could not see the grub menu and the kernel to boot from message so I could edit and do some investigating.
Did you end up working out what it was? Surely it couldn’t have been the lvcreate/mount, else the mount -a would’ve failed.
Did you use a UUID?
Hi, I failed my exam too. I got score 183. I had the same problem with “Booting from Hard disk”. I used UUID in /etc/fstab and I always used mount -a to make sure fstab file was working. I’m sure the type of partition was correct. I had tried in my lab with CentOS and it booted without problem. Can you help me why?
Brightside, unfortunately there is no simple way to resolve this issue. I can only suggest that you attempt to replicate the problem at home. Try and replicate with a CentOS 7.0 (with and without updates). Take Note of the N.D.A.
It’s been more than 55 hours and still waiting for my result.
How do I contact RedHat directly?
Did you already got your results?
Hi.
Can anyone help me with RHCSA autofs question, the question is:
configure autofs to automatically mount the home directory for user lisa under /dirnet when she logs into the system.
Step by step explaination would be appreciate.
If you follow this tutorial starting at the NFS Server Configuration title, you should get the answer you are waiting for.
First you need to install the right package
yum install -y autofs
Then:
showmount -e server.example.com /etc/auto.master.d/lisa.autofs
echo “/dirnet -rw,sync labipa.example.com:/home/lisa” > /etc/lisa.mount
mkdir /dirnet
systemctl enable autofs
systemctl start autofs
cd /dirnet
Good!
I saw a video where Sander Van Vugt said
showmount -edoesn’t work for NFSv4. He said, instead, just try to mount itIt is very well known that showmount -e doesn’t work if you don’t open some specific ports on the firewall (more information here).
Try to stop the firewall, you will see that showmount -e works whatever NFS version you use.
This is a bit more than stopping a firewall. Even if you stop it, you still need rpc-bind and mountd services to be running, as otherwise it’s not going to work. These services are only required by NFSv3, therefore if you run an NFSv4-only server, showmount won’t work (despite the fact that firewall is disabled).
Thank you for these precisions.
Thanks a lot for putting up this site!
I’ve passed my ex200 last friday, also thanks to your help and effort!
Congratulations!
Hello my friends
As many of you know, I’ve doing a few videos about RHCSA practice exams in order to help you in the preparation for this exam. All this videos are in my youtube channel.
I did the exam. My first impression of the exam was it is hard, but after you read all the instructions you will notice that is not that hard, the key is practice all the topics from the red had website. https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/ex200-red-hat-certified-system-administrator-rhcsa-exam
After a few minutes I realized all that need to do in order to get all the points. First you need to focus on the easy points, this kind of questions give you a confident to continue, because you still nervous at this point. Then, do NOT try to be smart doing things through the terminal when you already know very well how to do it using the GUI. Red Hat do not look how you do it, they look for the final result.
Also is very important to reboot your station every time that you think is necessary, or after a big change, because if the station do not boot unattended you will get score of 0. Do not waste time in question where you need to read man pages, this is unnecessary if you practice. Remember, practice is the key.
More common errors are typos in the name of the users, servers, url; etc. So, this mean that you need to read very well, example: user harry or user hary. Is very easy to make this error.No worries about the time, there is enough time to finish the exam twice, yes; twice.
The good resources for your preparation are the books from: Asghar Ghori, Sander van Vugt and Michael Jang. Those books provide multiples lab and practice exams at the end of the book. And yes, are more difficult than the exam.
Another key point that can help you is if you are currently working with Red Hat product, either CentOS or Fedora. This is a plus, also if you are already on a Linux Administrator position.
You can follow me on this page, or you can join me in a WhatsApp group, and also participate on the live meetings that I schedule frequently.
WhatsApp Group:
English:
https://chat.whatsapp.com/KwcUpEJ9n8uFpqrNGwdxlv
Spanish: https://chat.whatsapp.com/JSBTIC114DVKgLuoF6MwpT
My youtube channel is:
https://www.youtube.com/c/FidelDominguezValero
Hi,
Does the EX200 exam test system have graphical.target already available?
Asking because in regards to the KVM objective, I would want to use the GUI, instead of the cli.
As regularly said, the GUI may be available but you can’t be sure.
Also, don’t spend too much time on the KVM objectives. They are not at the heart of the RHCSA exam.
CertDepot,
I have a question about the exam. I took the exam last Friday and as expected at the beginning I had to reset the root password, but in doing so the shell that is used to reset the password wasn’t responding correctly. I couldn’t see what I was typing and what I typed wasn’t always what was sent to the shell. I had to type commands and then type history to see what was actually sent. Then to reset the password it wouldn’t accept input directly so I had to use the command echo with passwd –stdin. After which when I finally got it reset and logged in everything else worked fine.
It was very infuriating and I wasted a lot of time arguing with the proctor over text chat who relayed my messages to RH who in-turn responded that everything was good on their end and just expected me to continue like nothing was wrong. So, I was wondering was that normal for the exam? In all my studying I never ran across any comments or instructions to interact with the shell in such a way?
Your site has been a great help and overall I think I passed, thanks.
It happened to me too in rare circonstances when resetting the root password at boot but I don’t know the origin of this problem (rhgb, quiet mode?).
Peatross,
Did your try to reboot, or a rebuild before your above solution?
I did redhat exam.. While rebooting it went to maintenance mode… But i did all the question then i rebooted.. It went to physical mode.. But the time got over.. So do i lose any marks for this problem
First of all, I would like to thank CertDepot as I’ve just passed my exam on Thurs. All credits goes to you !!
To people out there, you may use nmtui (Network manager Text UI) and authconfig-tui (LDAP Text UI). People like me can’t remember the lengthy commands and the TUI is very helpful.
In addition, you need to understand how to set the netmasks with nmtui, eg IP/24, IP/32 etc. Otherwise you may modify the if-eth0 file as usual, and reboot the server if needed.
The exam questions were pretty easy, as most of them are mentioned in this forum.
I was over-confident when I left the Test Center.
To my astonishment, I’ve merely score a 216/300 (Pass = 210) !!
I didn’t have a chance to practice LDAP and AutoFS as there’s no LDAP Server in my environment. During the exam, I’ve managed to configure the LDAP and tested the ldapuser login successfully.
However, I couldn’t get the AutoFS working. This is my fault as I didn’t fully understand the AutoFS concept prior to my exam. Bear in mind that you need to modify both the auto.master and the auto.XXX files to make it work.
I’m not sure where else I’ve gone wrong for other questions besides the AutoFS, which causes me to have such a low scoring.
Creating archive, eg tar cvf (include j,z,Z) for bzip, gzip, compress) is something you need to know too.
It’s good to help you guys know that the firewall, SE Context, scripting were not tested in the recent exam. 😛
Thanks for the feedback.
Thank you so much for the work you put into this site. With the good advice/info from this site I managed to pass on Friday 🙂
Congratulations!
I have created a VM based on appendix B of the Jang/Osaria book. Obviously the kickstart requirement utilizes a static IP address. And (based on the IPs utilized) the NIC is defaulted to a NAT configuration. In my test environment, yum mirrors, repos, etc. are inaccessible, because the physical system and network use a different private networking class. I have to create and implement a bridge (eg “virbr0”) for it to work. My hope is the testing kiosk is pre-configured to allow yum searches, listings and installs on the VMs. Is that indeed the case? Or, is it a requirement to build and assign a bridge for the VM access prior to the VM creation?
Thank you in advance.
You shouldn’t need to create any bridge during the exam. You can assume that everything is already configured at this level.
Thank you. It was a dumb question for I just created a repo file that pointed to my ftp install location. I was then able to proceed with the required yum functions mentioned.
Referring to a question as dumb is not only disrespectful but also reflects the state of your heart. You didn’t bother to ask about the error messages received, but just assumed you had the correct answer; next time please be more polite.
Laugh, only referred to it as dumb, because I originated the question. I was only looking in the mirror when I replied. 🙂
I thought there is no creation of vm and installation of OS using kickstart?
There shouldn’t be.
I just had a frustrating time with determining why I could not communicate between a host and a VM that was created from a kick-start file. Both were on different subnets, and I exhausted multiple attempts at ip routing and variations in subnet masks. I finally found the root cause of the problem.
Think in terms of the defaults in KVM NAT networking. Typically the host utilizes a virbr0 net device with a 192.168.122.1 IP and provides DHCP on the same subnet. Complicate this with VM ks.cfg requirement to be populated with a static 192.168.100.100. I could ping 192.168.122.1 from the VM, but nothing more. And, there was nothing possible in the reverse direction from the host. Internet searches pointed to creating a bridge “br0” as a solution. This is a viable solution provided one is comfortable with possibly having to reboot the host system (aka testing kiosk). So I looked for another means.
It turns out the conflict was created by KVM parameters created on the VM. It too had its own virbr0 NAT device that was using the default 192.168.122.1 IP. Hence, my pinging results were to that device, and not the host. To solve the problem, I used “#virsh net-edit default” to change the VM’s virbr0 to a different private IP subnet…say 172.16.0.1 or similar. This required a restart of only the VM. But, only then was I able to ssh to the VM from the host, and point my repos file to the FTP site on the host.
I hope this is helpful.
Wow. Just took the RHCSA exam. I will not elaborate, but I did not do well. I spent too much time chasing a problem that could not be resolved by normal means. It was more a challenge for RHCE testers perhaps, and/or a test in deception; not knowledge. [From a barebones new install, one would never encounter such an environment.] To be fair though, the other content tested was appropriate. I knew it well thanks to this site and other resources. But, the distraction did not leave me with sufficient time to present same. I would recommend preparing on an AT-286 system, because it was characteristic of my kiosk experience…very…slow. Overshot keystrokes multiple times, which took forever to backspace over again to correct. There is no doubt I will pass the exam upon a second attempt given what was learned in this first experience. I do have doubts though that the certification is all “that” given what I encountered. Sorry, I am not trying to be disrespectful or disparaging, but it is my honest opinion.
Can you confirm did you do a “Individual exam” type test?
There are bad reports of the secure kiosk or laptop method on Certdepot website.
Yes, it was at a kiosk at a testing center, cameras et al. Not by website.
Can anyone tell me which RHEL Version is used as a testing platform? It will be a great help …
Thanks …
RedHat doesn’t provide this kind of information. You can expect RHEL 7.0, RHEL 7.1 or RHEL 7.2 (the two first options being the most likely).
If this answer doesn’t satisfy you, you will have to call a RedHat representative of the country where you want to take the exam but you won’t be sure of the answer until the exam itself!
What about the price in india?
If I didn’t provide them, it’s because they weren’t available. You have to call a RedHat representative.
I passed the RHCSA 🙂 thanks guys for the very good references to the topics
Congratulations!
As per quizzes and exercises here. Can you say this is enough? Did you go to a classroom training? or did you just rely on your experience?
Hello, I am planning to take the RHCSA soon. I used Red Hat’s skills assessment tool with the following result:
“The assessment recommendation considers that:
You are a beginning or intermediate level Linux administrator.
Based upon your assessment, we recommend you take the following courses:
RHCSA Rapid Track course with RHCSA exam (RH200)”
Like most I lack the funds to enroll in this course, I am looking for advice on what would be a good way to approach studying for the RHCSA which is focused and drill/practice-oriented? I’m interested in drilling myself repetitively on timed questions, much like the Task of the Day ones offered here.
Learn the various objectives and start practicing intensively.
Buy Sander’s book (I’m not advertising, however, I used his book myself and I found it really useful), read the whole thing and practice. If you don’t feel like you want the book then make sure that you have some study plan in place that covers all exam objectives.
Hi, I just got my RHCSA exam, and I just want to thank you for this useful website.
Congratulations!
One question about the environment: should I do all the work on virt console? Am I allowed to run remote graphical commands? Should I SSH to the remote system or can I just rely on the virt remote console?
You shouldn’t rely on the graphical environment because you may not have access to it. Also SSH access shouldn’t be available.
You should be prepared to only use the virt remote console.
Thank you very much.
So I can only rely on the *tui version of some tools
Yes.
You can SSH from host into the VM(s) (RHCSA & RHCE), and between the two VMs (RHCE). You will need to configure your NIC, as per exam requirement, before you can attempt to SSH. However, as mentioned by others, do not rely on SSH, but use console.
I see lots of people asking about GUI access. As I recall there are one or two GUI based config tools that make life easier as they have sanity checking that does not exist in the command line tools.
yum groupinstall “Server with GUI” will give it to you in the test but you will sacrifice 10 to 15 minutes of time as it installs all those packages.
I’m pretty sure one of the things that was better to do in GUI (and our instructor for classes emphasized this) was the LDAP config.
Interesting. Thanks.
Do not attempt to install the GUI during the exam. GUI is already installed. You just have to enable it as root user, in two different ways:
# startx
# systemctl isolate graphical.target
When GUI enabled, you can proceed with sanity checking
Hi CertDepot,
I passed my RHCSA, just studying for 11 straight days, I work in an Opensource company, that being said your website has helped me to cover up all the objectives after I did my part of the study. Thanks for compiling these wonderful notes together.
Congratulations!
I wanted to schedule my rhcsa exam with psi/examslocal.com but they no longer administer red hat exams as of june 2018. Anyone has any idea how and where to schedule/take the test?
I use https://training-lms.redhat.com.
Note: 2018-10-19 RHCSA@TORONTO, exam virtual machine is running RHEL 7.0.
So nmcli connect modify eth0 ipv4.gateway doesn’t work.
You have to use ” nmcli connect modify eth0 ipv4.address=”192.168.0.33/24 192.168.0.1″
Thanks for this information.