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Red Hat Announces Certified Architect Curriculum
Anonymous Coward writes "Red Hat announced a new advanced certification today, Red Hat Certified Architect. One training expert, however, cautions that Red Hat certifications can lock administrators in to Red Hat-specific skills."
as long as were are locking people in to Linux, this will be a better place. Distro nuts need not apply.
Sounds almost as credible as "Subway Sandwich Artist".
Even though they aren't always terribly useful, at least MSCE sounds more official. Normally this should be a non-issue but management likes titles that sound "official" or like they should carry some weight.
It would be nice if Red Hat offered a certification course for software developers.
Well, DUH...it is Red Hat certification. I can't imagine Red Hat would focus too much on teaching people how to use OTHER distros.
Is this any better than Microsoft Certification? I wonder if it will lock more into Redhat and paying for that. Linux may be "better" in some ways to windows but this is still locking in.
Evolution or ID?
Look at the course outline: NTP, BIND, Kerberos, OpenSSH, Sendmail, Postfix, FTP, Apache, CVS, LDAP, PAM, . How is knowing how to configure and secure those apps going to lock you into RedHat. Do you really think admins are too dumb to find the config files when they're in another directory (shudder). I mean, sure, there's going to be some vendor-specific lessons, but a server app is almost identicle across distros, especially since most admins will package up their own preconfigured packages.
I don't like Red Hat. I don't really like Fedora, either. I think SuSE, Mandrake, Gentoo, and Debian fill all the niches that pretty much any Linux user could ever need.
That said, distro "lock-in" is necessary to some extent. Having tried nearly every distro available, I know there is no Linux 'standard' especially when it comes to common administrative tasks like package management, updates, and system configuration. So I doubt that Red Hat is teaching specific skills any more than is necessary.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Well... In BC (Canada) MCSEs aren't allowed to say what MCSE stands for on ther resume or in job interviews because they're not engineers.
This is definitely flamebait (or offtopic, but enough of your are making this mistake, so....), I will be modded accordingly.....BUT:
For crissakes, there is no MSCE. It's the MCSE - Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. Most of you zealots have no idea what it takes to make an MCSE, for that matter.
Yes, the NT4 track brought about a lot of 'paper MCSEs', systems administrators who didn't know their ass from the hole in their PCI slots. I was one of them.
The MCSE 2000 course was much more difficult, and although you can still 'bootcamp' it within 2 weeks, it's not a cakewalk. You will learn common sense administration. You will learn enough about TCP/IP to set up a network that should scale to 300 users. Basic stuff. All that can be reasonable expected from someone still trying to cut their teeth as a network administrator.
It's not an expert, end-all, be-all certification, but it's sufficient for people who need to administer Windows networks (though I certainly wouldn't have them designing them, necessarily). It also requires the commitment to sit through (at last check) 7 tests.
I am an MCSE. I spent a few months of studying and a couple years of real world experience getting there. I've considered Red Hat's offerings, as well as the more independent LPI offering, for Linux certification.
The fact that a product is unfavorable to yourself, whether Red Hat's distribution of Linux, or Microsoft's Windows, is not a valid reason to put down those who picked up the necessary skills to validate themselves with these certifications.
> Never do another headless install
Umm, what are you talking about specifically? Heard of kickstart? Red Hat still has a graphical and a text based install. The graphical can even be done over VNC. Remote kickstarts are also possible by passing some install parameters (kickstart filename, network location, etc) via DHCP.
> Never use the command line to change settings again, use X!
Again what specifically are you talking about? Most tools still have text-gui interfaces, in addition to the X-gui ones. Editing config files with one's preferred text editor is also an option... unless you are claiming that Red Hat has somehow altered network server apps to use binary config files. Ok, you could be referring to Gnome and GConf... and their registry like system... but I'm not familiar with Gnome enough to comment... but again, Gnome isn't specific to Red Hat.
> Don't pick specific software you want installed, pick broad categories [etc]
Ok, that is somewhat of a valid complaint. I think they removed the individual package selection from the install for reasons other than an attempt to limit users. Of course you can always install or remove any software after the initial install... so the validity of the point is weakened greatly.
> up2date -u
Yeah, Red Hat does sell a service. up2date does still use rpm and all of the source for both apps has been released under the GPL. Of course the source for their RHN has not be released... but alternative systems are available... yum and apt-get.
Even in RHEL, source code to all distro packages is freely available, but not the binary packages... which still follows the rules of the GPL to the best of my knowledge. Red Hat has not taken any negative action against those taking the RHEL source packages and building a binary install path for them.
Red Hat also employs many top level kernel, gcc, glibc, and filesystem developers and are directly responsible for much of the aggressive development we see in all distros... because everything is given back to the community. To have a sustainable business model, Red Hat had to find some way to "take" and I think they have a good blance... especially since Fedora is still a viable option... rather than being the myth some folks make it out to be... as a substandard beta-test for RHEL.
My attitude has been that Linux is about preferences and choice and I don't fault anyone for using other distros... so why fault me for using Red Hat? I'm not trying to spread FUD here, but at least with Red Hat you have an idea of where they are going in the future. With SuSE, who knows what Novell will eventually do to grab onto a sustainable business plan? Where will Gentoo go? Mandrake? It is hard to say... but at least they are all working together to make Linux better. I see other commercial distros following in Red Hat's footsteps and ain't it grand we have literally hundreds of distros to pick from?!
Scott Dowdle
www.MontanaLinux.Org