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Dadaniao1
Flight Engineer
Flight Engineer
  • 11.2K Views

ex374 ansible automation exam is badly designed and has many bugs

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Hi,

 

I have taken 4 rhel exam, and  I personally think the exam ex374 which I took today is very badly designed.

 

1) Many questions do not have clear meanings, which makes it difficult to understand.

2) System environment is not correct, I failed to upload a collection to the hub for technique errors.  The tasks also complain about python environment not correct. Those settings should be fixed before we can take the exam.

3) Many tasks are not related to do374 course, and many important skills in do374 are not tested. That makes it ridiculous to take the do374 course.

I have been attending the do374 course, and I can finish all the lab assignment without any reference material. I do not think tasks failed due my errors.

I strong recommend Red Hat to request their employee to do the exam, and  fix those  bugs.

 

Appreciate feedback if any of you have taken the ex374 exam.

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

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3 Solutions

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Travis
Moderator
Moderator
  • 8,652 Views

@Trevor -

If you are ready you should defintely be able to take and pass the exam. If you have taken the course and thoroughly understood the material then you should have a very good chance of passing the exam.

What I will state is that some of the "newer" things might be challenging such as building collections or your own execution environments. I would definitely suggest to you that you experiment with building the EEs and see what other things you can try and how you can change or simplify the build process.

I will also say that there were a lot of carryovers from the EX447/DO447 course as the DO374 is the replacement course for that course. Almost all of the same topics are taught in the DO374 with the exception of the installation and use of Tower/Controller which is now in the DO467 course.

One thing that might help you and that you can use for your RHA students is:

https://github.com/tmichett/do374

I don't have my good ADOC book for everything, but I do have lots of working demos around this repository.

Travis Michette, RHCA XIII
https://rhtapps.redhat.com/verify?certId=111-134-086
SENIOR TECHNICAL INSTRUCTOR / CERTIFIED INSTRUCTOR AND EXAMINER
Red Hat Certification + Training

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Travis
Moderator
Moderator
  • 8,525 Views

@ianbe01 -

Yes there are both Git and Filter examples there in the repository that I use when I teach the courses.

One demo for filters can be found here: do374/Demos/CH7/Variable_Filters at main · tmichett/do374 · GitHub

do374/Demos/CH7/Demo at main · tmichett/do374 · GitHub

do374/Demos/CH7/DO447_Examples at main · tmichett/do374 · GitHub

do374/Demos/CH7/Loop_Demo/demo.yml at main · tmichett/do374 · GitHub

No real examples on using Git, but some stuff I showed students to help setup and streamline git.

do374/Demos/CH1/git at main · tmichett/do374 · GitHub

 

As both @Chetan_Tiwary_ and @Henry_Maine have mentioned, please send some of the specific feedback to https://rhtapps.redhat.com/comments/ as this will go to the team responsible for the exams. Even better, when taking the exam, if some questions are unclear, submit feedback directly as part of the exam in the "Submit Feedback" portion. This will allow feedback to be provided directly regarding the question and how it is worded. After that, still submit the feedback to the Comments Form and let them know you have more detailed and specific feedback attached to your exam.

I have worked with the exam team regarding some of the exam questions and getting them fixed in the past and I totally understand your frustration. It is sometimes difficult to create questions that everyone understands across multiple languages and geos, so the more feedback we get the better we can adjust the wording. Again, the only way to provide feedback is through the comments form and the "Submit Feedback" portion of the exam. The exam proctors have no control of the content and cannot directly/indirectly change anything on the exam.

Travis Michette, RHCA XIII
https://rhtapps.redhat.com/verify?certId=111-134-086
SENIOR TECHNICAL INSTRUCTOR / CERTIFIED INSTRUCTOR AND EXAMINER
Red Hat Certification + Training

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Travis
Moderator
Moderator
  • 4,997 Views

So not sure I 100% understand the question or where you are going, and as you know ... individual questions on exams and answers may never be discussed as part of the NDA.

However, it seems like you might have more conceptial questions here and there are a few ways of interpreting your question here. One of the key components of AAP 2.x is the ability to use EEs which provide a way to run playbooks efficiently across all systems. The EEI (Execution Environment Image) is meant to be portable and contain all pieces needed to run the tasks in a playbook. This includes having collections available inside the EEI, any OS packages inside the EEI, and any Python packages inside the EEI. Those are all needed in order to successfully run the and execute playbooks. 

In the current version of the course, there are three (3) files you need to be concerned with ...

requirements.yml - Collections that are installed in the EEI

requirements.txt - Python modules installed in the EEI

bindep.txt - Operating system packages and applications needed in the EEI

When I've delivered the course, I use a generic EEI and then build on top of it (especially around filters). We teach and show in the course the use of the IPADDR and other network filters. The use of these filters could require modules from collections in the playbook, but more importantly we know it needs some Python libraries. So the netaddr Python package might need to be in the requirements.txt. Furthermore, sometimes we also want the OS packages in there as part of the EEI, so we add python3-netaddr or equivalent packages to bindep.txt.

The other thing I like to do in the classes I teach is to show that since EEIs are just container images, we can start with something other than MINIMAL as the base image. I create a dummy collection for the coruse and when I build my special EEI, I use the RHEL8-Supported and just add my collection to it. That means I get all the collections, OS packages, and Python components and I'm just adding my collection.

Bottom line, I approach collections and EEIs as "what do we need to be successful?" and "how can I include all components?" when building and designing an EEI. This way you know that you've already tested with the RHEL8-Supported and it has all components, so the additon of your custom collections and other required components just extends what was already working.

 

Hope that helps

Travis Michette, RHCA XIII
https://rhtapps.redhat.com/verify?certId=111-134-086
SENIOR TECHNICAL INSTRUCTOR / CERTIFIED INSTRUCTOR AND EXAMINER
Red Hat Certification + Training

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21 Replies
Henry_Maine
Flight Engineer Flight Engineer
Flight Engineer
  • 6,553 Views

Hi Dadaniao1,

You can post your feedback to https://rhtapps.redhat.com/comments/ along with a request that it be forwarded to the exam development team and that will ensure that it makes its way to the exam developers.

 

Best regards,

Henry

 

Feliz
Mission Specialist
Mission Specialist
  • 6,360 Views

I did this EX374 a while ago and managed to get 100%.

I agree with you that this exam can be very confusing. Especially when the candidates have not used Ansible a lot and have not performed regular troubleshootings of Ansible low-level issues. 

I agree that some of the questions were not really about developing ansible collection, but was more on the topics covered in EX447. What helped me was that I have done EX447 before this and I have been using AAP2 since the day it was released.

And I think I had that python dependencies issues as well and managed to solve it by installing it separately. But yes that was not ideal situation for the candidate.

I do not know if the course/exam has been updated since I took this last year, but if this is still based on AAP 2.0 and earlier version ansible-builder, then it is not on sync with what's available out there. When I was doing this exam, I was already using AAP 2.2 for my work and the new ansible-builder & ansible-navigator version syntaxes have changed somewhat.

 

  • 5,471 Views

Hi Feliz,

Recently I appeared on EX374 exam and unable to clear it. Regarding Python dependency error, could you please eloborate how you resolved it. 

I also faced the same issue but unable to resolved it and this exam can't be clear without solving this problem. 

Thanks in advance.

medaminjaouadi
Mission Specialist
Mission Specialist
  • 5,077 Views

Hi , if we install some  required python packages inside the system package will the execution environment  consider it and use it when needed 

0 Kudos
ianbe01
Mission Specialist
Mission Specialist
  • 5,012 Views

Hi medaminjaouadi,

nobody can help you with this question because of the NDA.

 

medaminjaouadi
Mission Specialist
Mission Specialist
  • 5,007 Views

Hi , i know just asked for daily basis use but i understand  thanks

0 Kudos
Travis
Moderator
Moderator
  • 4,998 Views

So not sure I 100% understand the question or where you are going, and as you know ... individual questions on exams and answers may never be discussed as part of the NDA.

However, it seems like you might have more conceptial questions here and there are a few ways of interpreting your question here. One of the key components of AAP 2.x is the ability to use EEs which provide a way to run playbooks efficiently across all systems. The EEI (Execution Environment Image) is meant to be portable and contain all pieces needed to run the tasks in a playbook. This includes having collections available inside the EEI, any OS packages inside the EEI, and any Python packages inside the EEI. Those are all needed in order to successfully run the and execute playbooks. 

In the current version of the course, there are three (3) files you need to be concerned with ...

requirements.yml - Collections that are installed in the EEI

requirements.txt - Python modules installed in the EEI

bindep.txt - Operating system packages and applications needed in the EEI

When I've delivered the course, I use a generic EEI and then build on top of it (especially around filters). We teach and show in the course the use of the IPADDR and other network filters. The use of these filters could require modules from collections in the playbook, but more importantly we know it needs some Python libraries. So the netaddr Python package might need to be in the requirements.txt. Furthermore, sometimes we also want the OS packages in there as part of the EEI, so we add python3-netaddr or equivalent packages to bindep.txt.

The other thing I like to do in the classes I teach is to show that since EEIs are just container images, we can start with something other than MINIMAL as the base image. I create a dummy collection for the coruse and when I build my special EEI, I use the RHEL8-Supported and just add my collection to it. That means I get all the collections, OS packages, and Python components and I'm just adding my collection.

Bottom line, I approach collections and EEIs as "what do we need to be successful?" and "how can I include all components?" when building and designing an EEI. This way you know that you've already tested with the RHEL8-Supported and it has all components, so the additon of your custom collections and other required components just extends what was already working.

 

Hope that helps

Travis Michette, RHCA XIII
https://rhtapps.redhat.com/verify?certId=111-134-086
SENIOR TECHNICAL INSTRUCTOR / CERTIFIED INSTRUCTOR AND EXAMINER
Red Hat Certification + Training
medaminjaouadi
Mission Specialist
Mission Specialist
  • 4,975 Views

Thank you so much for the deep clarification

ianbe01
Mission Specialist
Mission Specialist
  • 5,604 Views

I completely agree. Took this exam a couple of times and failed on 2 areas each time. One time got 100% the next time got 0%. The questions are more like trick questions, where people working close to redhat will know the way to answer. The requirements for the questions are not clearly stated. When you do a course and the exercises and labs. Then are told the exam will be based on that course , then you expect it to be based on that course. Course DO374 and exam EX374.

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