Home lab

[GeorgeKoshy]

I would like to prepare a home lab after the course.  How to make the lab as mentioend like in the course labbook? 

[Tracy_Baker · Accepted solution]

If you talking about the RH124, RH134, RH254, or RH294, this isn't going to happen. There is content in the training environment that you can't get access to in a home lab arrangement. I suspect other training courses are the same way.

If you are studying for an RHCSA or RHCE, you can try a third party training resrouce. Michael Jang has a book that explains how to set up a home lab using virtual machines. (This is for RHEL 7)

What I did was to look at the published objectives as set up a lab as best as I could to match them. There were a few things I couldn't, or didn't want to, do - like keys and/or certificates (admittedly, for these items, I had access to an online training environment). Personally, I found that doing it this way really helped learn the material. It also helped me learn different ways to do things and, even more importantly, how to verify my work.

I also used the objectives to develop my own deliverables predicated upon what is taught in the coursework.

[Lisenet]

@Tracy_Baker "There is content in the training environment that you can't get access to in a home lab arrangement."

Out of curiosity, what content in the training environment are you referring to? I'm asking because I've done several exam preparations (including clustering, Satellite and OpenShift) where I was able to replicate the lab environment at home without issues. From my experience, pretty much everything they use in the training environment can be set up at home.

[Tracy_Baker]

A few examples:

Specific RH124/134 (RHCSA) things would be IPA or LDAP servers, Kerberos keytab files, and more. For RH254 (RHEL 7 RCHE), you'd not have certificate files and keys for Apache.

That's not to say that you can't set up your own home lab to have these things -- you can. However, if a person has just finished the courses I've mentioned above, the knowledge / skill required to do so exceeds what was taught in the classes.

[Lisenet]

@Tracy_Baker 

The things that you've mentioned can be set up in a homelab env. I agree however that it would require skills to do so for somebody who's just finished the course and doesn't have relevant experience.

[MKworkplay]

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(admittedly, for these items, I had access to an online training environment)

Tracy, what online training environment did you have?  

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[Tracy_Baker · Accepted solution]

I used a pair of CentOS 7 virtual machines. One has to be careful, though.

The version of RHEL in the classroom environment is 7.0. The version of CentOS (now) is 7.7. I did my studying on 7.3 and 7.5

Examples as to why you have to be careful:

This command works just fine in 7.3+ -- it does not work in 7.0:

nmcli con add con-name Testing type ethernet autoconnect no ifname eth0 ip4 10.0.0.1/24 gw4 10.0.0.254 ipv4.dns 8.8.8.8 +ipv4.dns 8.8.4.4

In 7.0 it generates an error message (concerning the ipv4.dns parts).

Also, in 7.0, if you right-click open a terminal from the GNOME desktop you get ~/Desktop/. If you do this in 7.3+ you get ~/

Even the systemctl status <service> output can look slightly different.

What this told me is that I have to be careful and follow the instructions and examples given for the 7.0 environment - that if I got too used to doing things a certain way in 7.3+ that I could cause errors that need correcting, meaning a loss of time.

And, as we all, know, time is of the essence on the exam.