RHEL7 RHCE What’s new?

Between RHCEv6 and RHCEv7, changes are very significant. The exam now lasts 3.5 hours and numerous objectives have been added (and almost none removed):

• Use network teaming or bonding to configure aggregated network links between two Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems.
• Configure IPv6 addresses and perform basic IPv6 troubleshooting.
• Use firewalld and associated mechanisms such as rich rules, zones and custom rules, to implement packet filtering and configure network address translation (NAT) (this objective replaces the Use iptables to implement packet filtering and configure network address translation objective).
• Configure a systems as either an iSCSI target or initiator that persistently mounts an iSCSI target (previously, only the iSCSI initiator configuration was an objective, not the iSCSI target part).
• Use SELinux port labelling to allow services to use non-standard ports.
• Configure TLS security on a HTTPS server.
• Troubleshoot DNS client issues.
• Use Kerberos to control access to NFS network shares.
• Use Kerberos to authenticate access to SMB shared directories.

Last but not least, some new RHCE exam objectives relate to MariaDB. A successful RHCE candidate will be able to:

• Install and configure MariaDB.
• Backup and restore a database.
• Create a simple database schema.
• Perform simple SQL queries against a database.

Although FTP & Rsyslog configuration are no longer RHCE exam objectives, Red Hat has seriously increased the difficulty of the RHCE exam. It now lasts 3.5 hours instead of 2, topics are more numerous and more technical (Kerberos, TLS, IPv6, Firewalld, teaming/bonding, iSCSI target, SELinux port labelling, MariaDB, etc).

UPDATE: In June 2016, two changes appeared:

• the “Use /proc/sys and sysctl to modify and set kernel  runtime parameters” objective was removed from the curriculum,
• the “Configure private directories” objective was renamed to “Configure access restrictions on directories” without any particular consequences except the wording.

UPDATE: In July 2018, the RHCE exam page specifies at the top that RHEL 7.0 is the version used at the exam.

UPDATE: Since mid-2018, Red Hat has finally started providing a breakdown of performance across a number of topic categories after each exam (more details here).

UPDATE: The RHCE 7 exam (EX300) will be available until August 1, 2020. The RHCE 8 exam (EX294) has been available since June 2019 (more details here).