What books have been helpful in helping you study or complete your exam?

[MarjorieFreeman]

What books, podcasts, videos, or other resources have helped you as you work to complete your exam?

I'd love to potentially include a few responses in a round-up article for Enable Architect, listing people's favorite resources for studying for tech certifications. It can be anything you think could help someone else learn something new or solve a problem as they're looking. 

[FabioReis]

Hello @MarjorieFreeman , 

Besides of complete the official course, I usually start my labs by reading and installing the community version. This is a good practice to have more experience with the product. 

[MarjorieFreeman]

This is a great idea. I've never taken the course! How do you install a community version?

[Fran_Garcia]

That depends on the certification you are taking .  

- For a RHEL certification, I'd try to get an temporary subscription or a developer subscription if I don't have one at https://developers.redhat.com/. In some cases, I'd also test a Fedora system.

- For a Red Hat Satellite certification, I'd have a go at the upstream projects Foreman and Katello at https://theforeman.org .

- For a Red Hat Virtualization certification, I'd check www.ovirt.org . 

- For an Openshift certification, I'd have a look at either Kubernetes or the OKD distribution (as well as Openshift Local).

- ...etc.

This helps understand the differences between the community project, vs the Red Hat supported product. It also allows students to read the latest documentation and play with the latest bits... which also might be less stable that the Red Hat-provided software. All in all, the more sources of documentation and experimentation, the better.

[MarjorieFreeman]

Thanks for the clarification and for listing these different communities. Basically the more hands-on the better. 

[FabioReis]

@MarjorieFreeman 

A good way to start is getting the developer subscription and testing the product you want as @Fran_Garcia mentioned. 

Please take a look at this article and create an account to start testing. 
https://developers.redhat.com/articles/faqs-no-cost-red-hat-enterprise-linux

For example, the pacemaker is an High Availability solution and you can test using the opensource project with Fedora or using the subscription with RHEL. 

https://clusterlabs.org/pacemaker/

Regards, 

Fabio 

[chandrasred]

Resources that have been helpful in studying for the Tech. Exams:

1. The Official Guides of that particular course for that exam.

2. List of topics that  I couldn't understand properly - [ That helps me identify the concepts I need to work more on ].

3. Youtube videos that covers that particular topic with visuals - [ More diagrams, workflows etc ].

4. Self-made notes that I created per each concepts with below structure -

     a. First we should have digital notes and from first page should be good index.

     b. After the index pages should be having the dictonary all the abbreviations used.

     c. After the dictonary pages combinations of concepts that you can use together with

        brief examples of combos to have idea how we can use them together to get quick

        understanding. 

    d. After the linking topics and combo pages have the concepts as per the index you

        choose as per below structure:

              1. Topic name & concept.             

              2.  Diagrams that helps you understand it with visuals.

              3.  Examples: [ Basic ones and also the combinations with different concepts -    ]

                                     [ Make sure you test all of the examples then only write there. ]

              4. Common errors & the troubleshooting approach for those errors -
                          [ this part should always be updated for your future refrences. ]

              5. Refrence links and videos per topics after error sections.

5. Have a cricle of friends who are preparing for the same exam and always have a

    discussion session 4 days a week so to get different prespective and correction.

[MarjorieFreeman]

These are great tips, Chandra. I like the emphasis on how to take notes. I'm a visual learner, so the more detail, the better for me when studying!

[chandrasred]

Our brain learns things that are more visual and we can associate the concepts with our favourite topics as that helps us to get the concept understanding way better.

[Trevor]

Hello Marjorie,

I'm a site hopper!   

After I lay my hands on the objectives for a particular exam, from there I begin my trolling on whatever sites are serving up content that addresses the exam objectives. 

Even before I begin my maneuvering around the sites, I actually begin with the man pages.  Take the EX415 exam for example, one of the objectives involves having knowledge and skills with PAM.  Well, one could easily have a PAM feast with the man pages.  I know the man pages aren't necessarily intended to be a textbook, but I just like looking "under the covers" at things.  I've just always been one who likes to see what's under the hood.  With me, it's more than just prepping to pass an exam.  Also, the man pages are going to require me to roll up my sleeves, and get my hands dirty - and just how I like it.  

If there aren't man pages to satisfy my appetite, I'll make my way over to one of my favorite waterholes - access.redhat.com.  Once I'm in there, "product documentation" is where I'm going to spend some quality time.  There's always some great sources for learning there!!!

Some other spots that I've been known to hangout are opensource.com and lab.redhat.com.  I'd be remiss if I didn't give Linkedin Learning a shoutout also.

Of course there are many other sites, with some wonderful articles that I will snack on.  Again, it just depends on what concept I'm digging into.  All things considered, I'm all over the place because the multitude of resources provide a myriad of perspectives of the exam objectives.