Online CentOS administration courses / resources?
March 27, 2015 3:53 PM Subscribe
I'd like to take two or three weeks and intensively study the administration of CentOS servers. What resources or online classes exist? Red Hat certification courses/resources would count.
I know that's a super broad request. The ultimate application of the knowledge will be managing a handful of public web servers behind a load balancer hosted at a company like Rackspace. They'll be managed servers, but ideally I'd like to get a very strong grasp of even the parts that are taken care of for me. Apache and MySQL for sure. The rest I'm not sure of right now.
I have OK Linux commandline skills and experience setting up small VPS servers at providers like Digital Ocean and Linode.
I know that's a super broad request. The ultimate application of the knowledge will be managing a handful of public web servers behind a load balancer hosted at a company like Rackspace. They'll be managed servers, but ideally I'd like to get a very strong grasp of even the parts that are taken care of for me. Apache and MySQL for sure. The rest I'm not sure of right now.
I have OK Linux commandline skills and experience setting up small VPS servers at providers like Digital Ocean and Linode.
Oh, and one thing that might not get covered in the links in my previous comment: automated configuration management. You will almost certainly want to learn something about Puppet or Chef or Ansible or Salt.
posted by asterix at 5:03 PM on March 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by asterix at 5:03 PM on March 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
The ultimate application of the knowledge will be managing a handful of public web servers behind a load balancer hosted at a company like Rackspace.
Do you already work there or is the goal to get a job doing this? I ask, and think that it's relevant, because if you already have the job and just need the skills that might lend itself to a different path than if you want to do this for a resume line in order to land a job. In the former case you just need knowledge, in the latter case it may be equally important to get some sort of certification, basically some organization's imprimatur that you can show to recruiters.
If you don't need the certification I would not pay for one; I think the courses built around certs tend to do a lot of teach-to-the-test stuff that is pretty low-value otherwise. But it is also difficult assess technical knowledge so I wouldn't go so far as to say they have no value. If you do need the resume lines, I can vouch somewhat for the Linux Foundation courses as being pretty well designed.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:51 PM on March 27, 2015
Do you already work there or is the goal to get a job doing this? I ask, and think that it's relevant, because if you already have the job and just need the skills that might lend itself to a different path than if you want to do this for a resume line in order to land a job. In the former case you just need knowledge, in the latter case it may be equally important to get some sort of certification, basically some organization's imprimatur that you can show to recruiters.
If you don't need the certification I would not pay for one; I think the courses built around certs tend to do a lot of teach-to-the-test stuff that is pretty low-value otherwise. But it is also difficult assess technical knowledge so I wouldn't go so far as to say they have no value. If you do need the resume lines, I can vouch somewhat for the Linux Foundation courses as being pretty well designed.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:51 PM on March 27, 2015
LPI is a good distribution-agnostic certification, the syllabus will give you a good framework for self study. The Nemeth book is good, I have it.
Teaching yourself in a crash course is near pointless in my experience, this is only useful for cramming for a test and without repetition or practice you won't retain very much. This stuff takes time to sink in and practical situations to apply the knowledge in. Experienced sysadmins haven't crammed for a few weeks they have worked at the coalface for months or years.
posted by epo at 3:23 AM on March 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Teaching yourself in a crash course is near pointless in my experience, this is only useful for cramming for a test and without repetition or practice you won't retain very much. This stuff takes time to sink in and practical situations to apply the knowledge in. Experienced sysadmins haven't crammed for a few weeks they have worked at the coalface for months or years.
posted by epo at 3:23 AM on March 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Red Hat has some of the best training and certification classes I’ve seen. They’re well worth the cost, and anything that Red Hat provides will be 100% applicable to CentOS as well. If you have some prior experience there used to be - and probably still is - a fast-track class that includes the RHCT and RHCE exams in one session.
posted by tkolstee at 2:29 PM on March 28, 2015
posted by tkolstee at 2:29 PM on March 28, 2015
2nd RHEL classes online - they are the industry standard.
posted by iamabot at 3:51 PM on March 28, 2015
posted by iamabot at 3:51 PM on March 28, 2015
Response by poster: Not sure I can fork over $2k or more for them, though :(
This is to help prep for a duty I have to take over, not a job I'm trying for.
posted by Number Used Once at 8:08 AM on April 1, 2015
This is to help prep for a duty I have to take over, not a job I'm trying for.
posted by Number Used Once at 8:08 AM on April 1, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
Having done this professionally, I personally would not pay for any certification or courses. Start with the Digital Ocean docs, then pick up a book on the subject (the Red Book is a classic, although I can't speak for the quality of the 4th edition in particular). Unix Power Tools also might come in handy.
posted by asterix at 4:59 PM on March 27, 2015