Category Archives: IT Admin

Guest Post: Preparing for Red Hat exams

Posted on by
Reply

By Damian Tommasino

Why Certify?

The demand for Linux engineers today is growing rapidly with the increase of “cloud” services. More and more organizations want their data to be available everywhere they go with zero downtime to their applications. This kind of demand from organizations requires that engineers know their “stuff” cold. When a web server goes down or a disk fails, you don’t have time to Google for an answer while there is a service outage affecting all of your customers. Becoming Red Hat certified is just one way to set yourself apart when showing potential, or current, employers that you can rise to the challenge.

Red Hat has clearly recognized these types of challenges that engineers and administrators face today when they developed their exams. Instead of the normal Q & A you would expect, these exams are fully hands-on. This lab style exam format helps to set Red Hat apart from other vendors by showing that certified individuals are highly experienced in their roles. For me, having Linux experience is critical to my job and being certified (from multiple vendors) shows expertise to my clients and peers.

Exam Format

The two main Red Hat exams are the Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) exam, and the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) exam. As previously mentioned, each exam is completely hands-on and requires a solid proficiency of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in order to pass. The RHCSA is two and half (2.5) hours long, while the RHCE is two (2) hours.
Continue reading →

My thoughts on open source

Posted on by
Reply

by Bruno Lima

Long an acquaintance and ally of government institutions, open source is no longer considered rocket science by the enterprise.

Companies find open source attractive because they’re not tied to one vendor, can make improvements in the system at any time and realize cost savings, all helping boost market penetration. And, of course, there’s the benefit of communities continuously improving the products.

In the outside world, governments are strong sponsors of this type of initiative, especially in Brazil, where the use of free and open source software is encouraged to make the market more democratic. And, of course, the market has become increasingly more open to open source. While there were once concerns about the reliability, security, and functionality, those fears are all gone. Red Hat has made it possible to combine the benefits of these technologies with the necessary support for mission-critical environments, developing platforms and the specific demands organizations face.
Continue reading →

Tips and Tricks: JBoss Enterprise Application Development (JB225)

Posted on by
Reply

by Jim Rigsbee (Red Hat)

Converting a web project generated by the JBoss Developer Studio CDI Web Project wizard to a Maven project will give you the power of the Maven build system with its dependency management, build life cycles, and automated JEE packaging abilities. To covert a JBoss Developer Studio web project, follow these steps:

1. Right click on the project name in the Project Explorer tree and select Configure → Convert to Maven Project… In the wizard steps be sure to select WAR packaging.

2. Configure the Java SE 6 compiler plugin so that we can process annotations. Add this to pom.xml file:

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <source>1.6</source>
            <target>1.6</target>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>

Continue reading →

Guest Post: Journey to RHCE and beyond

Posted on by
6

by Christian Stankowic

My interest in Linux started in 2005 at the age of 15 when I discovered Ubuntu Linux. After being upset about my slow and always virus-attacked computer, I decided to try out something completely new.

I never had Linux on my computer before and wanted to have a look at it. After some first trials with OpenSuSE I got into Ubuntu and made my first experiences with the open operating system.

After exclusively using Ubuntu for almost two years I had a look at several other distros, including Debian, CentOS and Fedora. To learn more about Linux I built my own private “lab” using old spare computers. All these computers ran Linux, so I started to learn about network services including Apache, DHCP and Samba.
Continue reading →