Exam description
The performance-based Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) exam for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (EX294) tests your knowledge and skill in managing multiple systems using Red Hat® Ansible® Engine and executing common system administration tasks across a number of systems with Ansible. The skills tested in this exam are the foundation for system administration across many Red Hat products.
By passing this exam, you become an RHCE®, which also counts toward becoming a Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA®).
This exam is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux® 8 and Red Hat Ansible Engine 2.8.
Audience for this exam
- Experienced Red Hat Enterprise Linux system administrators seeking validation of their skills or require a certification either by their organization or based on a mandate (DoD 8570 directive)
- Students who have taken Red Hat System Administration III: Linux Automation with Ansible (RH294) and are on the path to becoming a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
- Students who are on the path to becoming a Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA)
- Systems administrators who want to demonstrate competency in managing multiple systems
- IT professionals who work in a DevOps environment and want to demonstrate competency in automating part of their workload
- Red Hat Certified Engineers who are noncurrent or who are about to become noncurrent and wish to recertify as RHCEs
Prerequisites for this exam
Study points for the exam
RHCE exam candidates should consult the RHCSA exam objectives and be capable of RHCSA-level tasks, as some of these skills may be required in order to meet RHCE exam objectives. Red Hat reserves the right to add, modify, and remove objectives. Such changes will be made public in advance through revisions to this document.
RHCE exam candidates should be able to accomplish the following without assistance. These have been grouped into several categories.
- System configuration and management
- 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
- Route IP traffic and create static routes
- Use firewalld and associated mechanisms such as rich rules, zones and custom rules, to implement packet filtering and configure network address translation (NAT)
- Configure a system to authenticate using Kerberos
- Configure a system as either an iSCSI target or initiator that persistently mounts an iSCSI target
- Produce and deliver reports on system utilization (processor, memory, disk, and network)
- Use shell scripting to automate system maintenance tasks
- Network services
Network services are an important subset of the exam objectives. RHCE candidates should be capable of meeting the following objectives for each of the network services listed below:
- Install the packages needed to provide the service
- Configure SELinux to support the service
- Use SELinux port labeling to allow services to use non-standard ports
- Configure the service to start when the system is booted
- Configure the service for basic operation
- Configure host-based and user-based security for the service
- HTTP/HTTPS
- Configure a virtual host
- Configure access restrictions on directories
- Deploy a basic CGI application
- Configure group-managed content
- Configure TLS security
- DNS
- Configure a caching-only name server
- Troubleshoot DNS client issues
- NFS
- Provide network shares to specific clients
- Provide network shares suitable for group collaboration
- Use Kerberos to control access to NFS network shares
- SMB
- Provide network shares to specific clients
- Provide network shares suitable for group collaboration
- SMTP
- Configure a system to forward all email to a central mail server
- SSH
- Configure key-based authentication
- Configure additional options described in documentation
- NTP
- Synchronize time using other NTP peers
- Database services
- Install and configure MariaDB
- Backup and restore a database
- Create a simple database schema
- Perform simple SQL queries against a database
