ex374 ansible automation exam is badly designed and has many bugs

[Dadaniao1]

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!

[Henry_Maine]

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]

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.

[AshishShukla83]

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]

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

[ianbe01]

Hi medaminjaouadi,

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

[medaminjaouadi]

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

[Travis · Accepted solution]

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

[medaminjaouadi]

Thank you so much for the deep clarification

[ianbe01]

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.