At FlowFactor, we believe certifications are a big value to the development of our people. It gives our employees the opportunity to keep on learning and validate their knowledge. So we asked Dusty Lefevre, who recently passed the Red Hat Certified Engineer and Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible Best Practices certifications, to give us some quick tips!

 Be prepared.

Review the exam’s objectives beforehand and ensure you know the required techniques by heart. Documentation that’s bundled with the product will be provided during the exam. Ensure you’re familiar with the documentation so you can quickly navigate through it. Although documentation is often provided, you will not have the time to look up everything.

Manage your time.

The exam is performance based and limited in time. Be sure to not overspend your time on one exercise with the risk of not completing others. If you have troubles with a specific exam question, continue with the next question and revisit the problematic one later.

Beware for dependencies between questions.

Before kicking-off, meticulously read all questions to spot any dependencies between them.

Do what’s asked, and do nothing more.

There’s no point waisting time on things that haven’t been asked. Moreover, you risk introducing accidental errors that will cost you points.

Make sure your solutions still work after a reboots/rollbacks.

Systems are typically rebooted prior to evaluation. For assignments where systems are automatically provisioned (e.g. Ansible), the systems may even be reverted to their initial state. Ensure that your solutions still work after such a rollback or reboot. A system that does not boot, cannot be evaluated and will cost you dearly in points.

Doublecheck your solutions

Especially if you have time left. Make sure files are named correctly, are stored on the correct location or are committed to the correct repository.

Plan your exam when you’re at your sharpest.

This is often personal, but it’s probably wise not to take the exam after a full day of work. Also make sure you’re well-rested, and had your morning coffee.

If you take these general tips into account, you’ll pass with flying colors. If you need some more guidance.. Well, we have quite some RedHat Certified Engineers in our team. The only thing you need to do is join our team of DevOps enthusiasts!