Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) exam

Course Overview

The performance-based Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) exam (EX200) tests your knowledge in areas of system administration common across a wide range of environments and deployment scenarios. The skills tested in this exam are the foundation for system administration across all Red Hat® products.

By passing this exam, you become a Red Hat Certified System Administrator. If you choose to continue your learning journey beyond RHCSA, the credential can also serve as a foundational step on your path toward our highest level of certification—Red Hat Certified Architect.

This exam is based on Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 9.0.

Please note; If you do not find a suitable date, you can also book it as an individual exam via: KIOSK

Target Audience

• Experienced Red Hat Enterprise Linux system administrators seeking validation of their skills
• Students who have attended Red Hat System Administration I (RH124) and Red Hat System Administration II (RH134) and are on the path to becoming an RHCSA
• Experienced Linux system administrators who require a certification either by their organization or based on a mandate (DoD 8570 directive)
• IT professionals who are on the path to becoming a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
• An RHCE who is noncurrent or who is about to become noncurrent and wants to recertify as an RHCE
• DevOps professionals who wish to demonstrate their expertise with the fundamentals of container technology

Course Objectives

• This certification exam is performance-based, meaning that candidates must perform tasks on a live system, rather than answering questions about how one might perform those tasks.
• The hands-on nature of this exam make real-world experience a critical facet of preparation.
• Exam results are emailed within (5) US business days following the exam.
• An RHCSA certification has a 'current' window for 3 calendar years. This 'current' window can be extended by earning additional Red Hat credentials. See re-certification policies for more information.
  

Course Content

RHCSA exam candidates should be able to accomplish the tasks below without assistance. These have been grouped into several categories.

• Access a shell prompt and issue commands with correct syntax
• Use input-output redirection (>, >>, |, 2>, etc.)
• Use grep and regular expressions to analyze text
• Access remote systems using SSH
• Log in and switch users in multiuser targets
• Archive, compress, unpack, and uncompress files using tar, star, gzip, and bzip2
• Create and edit text files
• Create, delete, copy, and move files and directories
• Create hard and soft links
• List, set, and change standard ugo/rwx permissions
• Locate, read, and use system documentation including man, info, and files in /usr/share/doc

• Conditionally execute code (use of: if, test, [], etc.)
• Use Looping constructs (for, etc.) to process file, command line input
• Process script inputs ($1, $2, etc.)
• Processing output of shell commands within a script

• Boot, reboot, and shut down a system normally
• Boot systems into different targets manually
• Interrupt the boot process in order to gain access to a system
• Identify CPU/memory intensive processes and kill processes
• Adjust process scheduling
• Manage tuning profiles
• Locate and interpret system log files and journals
• Preserve system journals
• Start, stop, and check the status of network services
• Securely transfer files between systems

• List, create, delete partitions on MBR and GPT disks
• Create and remove physical volumes
• Assign physical volumes to volume groups
• Create and delete logical volumes
• Configure systems to mount file systems at boot by universally unique ID (UUID) or label
• Add new partitions and logical volumes, and swap to a system non-destructively

• Create, mount, unmount, and use vfat, ext4, and xfs file systems
• Mount and unmount network file systems using NFS
• Configure autofs
• Extend existing logical volumes
• Create and configure set-GID directories for collaboration
• Diagnose and correct file permission problems

• Schedule tasks using at and cron
• Start and stop services and configure services to start automatically at boot
• Configure systems to boot into a specific target automatically
• Configure time service clients
• Install and update software packages from Red Hat Network, a remote repository, or from the local file system
• Modify the system bootloader

• Configure IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
• Configure hostname resolution
• Configure network services to start automatically at boot
• Restrict network access using firewall-cmd/firewall

• Create, delete, and modify local user accounts
• Change passwords and adjust password aging for local user accounts
• Create, delete, and modify local groups and group memberships
• Configure superuser access

• Configure firewall settings using firewall-cmd/firewalld
• Manage default file permissions
• Configure key-based authentication for SSH
• Set enforcing and permissive modes for SELinux
• List and identify SELinux file and process context
• Restore default file contexts
• Manage SELinux port labels
• Use boolean settings to modify system SELinux settings
• Diagnose and address routine SELinux policy violations

• Find and retrieve container images from a remote registry
• Inspect container images
• Perform container management using commands such as podman and skopeo
• Build a container from a Containerfile
• Perform basic container management such as running, starting, stopping, and listing running containers
• Run a service inside a container
• Configure a container to start automatically as a systemd service
• Attach persistent storage to a container

As with all Red Hat performance-based exams, configurations must persist after reboot without intervention.

Red Hat reserves the right to add, modify, and remove objectives. Such changes will be made public in advance through revisions to this document.

Course Prerequisites

• Have either taken Red Hat System Administration I (RH124) and Red Hat System Administration II (RH134) or the RHCSA Rapid Track course (RH199) that combines those courses, or have comparable work experience as a system administrator on Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Review the Red Hat Certified System Administrator exam (EX200) objectives
• Take our free assessment to find the course that best supports your preparation for this exam

Test Certification

• Length 2,5 Hours 09.00am start
• This exam prepares you for these credentials:
• Red Hat Certified System Administrator — RHCSA
• An RHCSA certification is earned when an IT professional demonstrates the core system administration skills required in Red Hat Enterprise Linux® environments.