Is RHCSA a good choice to start a DevOps career (or other IT jobs)?

Posted by Euphoric-Eye-8196@reddit | linuxadmin | View on Reddit | 25 comments

Hi everyone, I’m planning to build my career in DevOps, but I’m a bit confused about where to start. I’m thinking about doing the RHCSA (Red Hat Certified System Administrator) certification. Would RHCSA be a good starting point for DevOps? Also, if I don’t get into DevOps, can RHCSA help me get another good IT job? Any advice from professionals would be really helpful. Thanks in advance!

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biffbobfred@reddit

No. It’s more for sysadmin jobs. If that’s where you wanna go, cool.

Study git ops. Make a GitHub repo. Learn how to do GitHub actions. Set up Jenkins at home to run jobs based on git events.

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Flash_Haos@reddit

How you think one can understand docker not understanding Linux?

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biffbobfred@reddit

Docker is a subset of userland. There’s a lot you can get away with for DevOps knowing a subset of Linux.

You don’t need RHEL level. You need to know build tools.

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Flash_Haos@reddit

You are an old sea wolf and you don’t even think of the most basic things that are not known for newbies. Unix permissions, bash pipes, process control. The basics. You know it because it is still the same since forever, however it has to be learned. And rhcsa is a good option.

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biffbobfred@reddit

You have a point.

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eman0821@reddit

You don't a RHCSA at all. But you do need sysadmin experience. You can't break into DevOps or a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer role without IT infrastructure experience. You are going have to start in the Help Desk to -> Sysadmin to DevOps Engineer to get there. DevOps Engineering is not entry-level.

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mezbot@reddit

I agree help/service desk is a good skill builder, and allows you to have significantly more empathy for the BS they deal with. But it’s not mandatory, especially due to a lot of it being Windows/Mac related. However, strong sysadmin knowledge is a fundamental, especially if you are automating the shit out of it.

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lbpowar@reddit

Will go against the others and say that Linux fundamentals are essential to be a good devops. Sure, containerization and pipelines are important but they’re tools not essential concepts.

If you’re starting out I wouldn’t expect to land a devops job as it’s more mid level, the rhcsa can help you get a shot at an interview for other roles

Before jumping in the fancy tools take the time to learn the basic, it will save you headaches down the line as things often are just recycled concepts.

TL;DR I think the rhcsa is a good starting point, check out sanders van gubt books

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Certain-Praline5891@reddit

I second this. Most of my current colleagues are just trying to get as much AWS/GCP/Azure certifications as possible without studying the foundations like Linux and Networking. Some even jump right into technologies like Kubernetes without even knowing anything about Linux. They said: "The clouds handle all of those foundations for us". What a shame

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sudonem@reddit

Strong agree.

I keep hearing in the thread “Linux doesn’t matter because it’s all cloud operations” which completely ignores that the cloud is Linux all the way down.

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eman0821@reddit

You generally start off as a Linux Sysadmin or a Sysadmin role that supports Linux before carrer prorcoessing into a a DevOps Engineer role. People think DevOps Engineering is entry-level.

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sudonem@reddit

I agree that this is how it SHOULD happen, however my experience is that this is often not the case - especially in more recent years.

It’s much the same with infosec/cybersecurity roles.

No role in cybersecurity should be considered entry level. Most cybersecurity degrees don’t build the foundational knowledge required for systems administration and hardening - and yet organizations are very frequently hiring cybersecurity grads who’ve never worked in a help desk let alone a systems admin role and making them infosec analysts (or higher).

It’s a mess and a lot of conflicting interests at play.

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hodor137@reddit

Yea, it's an entry level cert and fantastic for showing you have a good base of fundamentals. Obviously it's not the centerpiece of your resume when applying for a DevOps role, but if I saw RHCSA as well, I'd know the person has legit Linux skills and knowledge and that's a nice asset. Especially when many/most roles, as much as they think they're modern and cloud only, have plenty of legacy Linux systems to deal with.

It is a very good practical/lab test, which means it truly tests the skills and knowledge someone has, on a system. Not memorizing from a textbook/study guide, etc. Carries alot more weight because of it.

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sudonem@reddit

Yes - especially given that the RHCE is essentially “do everything you just did in the RHCSA, but automate it with Ansible” I’d say that the RHCSA is still very relevant to DevOps & SRE roles.

If you don’t understand the underlying Linux systems well enough you’ll have a difficult time orchestrating them with terraform & Ansible.

I’m a Linux engineer in my org and struggle with this because the DevOps team are largely not “Linux first” so a lot of their orchestration with Linux is a mess - lots of insecure or otherwise bad/wrong configurations for Linux systems as well as the containerized apps they are running.

Very frustrating.

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GenuineGeek@reddit

Almost 10 years ago my company realized that "DevOps is the way to go", but wanted to do it cheap: since the dev team was familiar with Linux, let them also do the DevOps part as well. So we ended up in a situation where software engineering interns were responsible for creating the docker images intended for production use.

They clearly didn't have the necessary skills: I knew we were in trouble the moment I found chmod -R 777 in the Dockerfile. And this wasn't even the worst thing they did...

I raised this issue to their manager and asked for some more supervision for the intern's work. Apparently this whole mess was reviewed and approved by some of the senior devs - and we should trust them, because they are familiar with Linux.

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sudonem@reddit

Don’t even get me started about the number of plain text passwords and permissions issues I’ve found “but it’s okay because it’s in a container”.

Jfc.

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sloppy_custard@reddit

It’s not a bad cert to get as it’s a pre-requisite for the RHCE. I’m a Linux admin by trade and am looking to pivot into the devops/SRE world. In our org the current DevOps guys “don’t know Linux” which kind of blows my mind. Moving into that world, imo, knowing how all the abstracted layers work underneath will set someone apart from someone else who just knows how the abstraction works.

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moderatenerd@reddit

So that reinforces my thought that devops roles are mostly for programmers that have 5-10 years of C++ experience and the companies let the Linux stuff slide. I have 3 years of exp as a Linux sysadmin 15 years of overall it exp but I'm not programmer and I don't know any of the tech stacks because I've never been in a tech role or company that uses them. I never get a callback for devops roles

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Aero077@reddit

Linux skills are foundational. You don't need a RHCE per se, but the RHCSA and more specifically, the knowledge you get from the exam study, will always be useful. In a crowded job market, being the person who checks most of the boxes.

Understand permissions, shell scripting, ansible, virtualization.

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DarkXsmasher@reddit

Why the hell would you need an RHCSA to get into devops? No ones expecting a deep linux knowledge from you as a newbie. Learn the necessary stuff instead of going for RHCSA.

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shulemaker@reddit

RHCSA might eventually help you get a junior Linux admin job at a larger org with a lot of servers. It’s not a direct path to DevOps these days and straight linux skills are less in demand due to the cloud. Most of us working in the cloud came from that background and are focusing on kubernetes. CKA is a more relevant cert.

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moderatenerd@reddit

Yeah but if hes a fresher he is not gonna get a kubes job at this point with CKA. These companies are looking for people with 5-10 years exp in just kubernetes. They don't want a fresh person. Kinda why I gave up going that route there's no way I could compete from a sysadmin background.

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