Experience preparing for the exam on the status of RHCVA (Red Hat Certified Virtualizaion Administrator)

Not so long ago, I was fortunate enough to take the Red Hat Virtualization course (RH-318) and take part in passing the corresponding RHCVA exam - Red Hat Certified Virtualization Administrator (EX-318). Unfortunately, I did not find similar topics on Habré, so I’ll share my own experience in preparing for the exam.

For obvious reasons, I cannot disclose information about the exam, its contents, so I will use only open sources, which are enough to be ready at the right moment.

The EX-318 exam is designed for professionals who want to confirm their knowledge and skills in managing virtualization from Red Hat, as well as it is included in the line of certifications necessary for obtaining the RHCA status - Datacenter (Red Hat Certified Architect). For those who are interested in the status of an architect, you can see here .

This Red Hat exam recommends that you take it to IT specialists at the RHCSA (Red Hat Certified System Administrator) level, or to specialists with similar knowledge expressed in several years of administering Linux systems.
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If you decipher this proposal and put your own experience on top, then the threshold of entry is approximately the following:

1. You must be familiar with virtualization (you do not need to know how KVM works, but you should know the general principles);
2. You must be familiar with technologies such as FC, NFS, iSCSI;
3. It is necessary to have at least a basic understanding of networks, to understand what VLAN is, Bonding;
4. A little to understand Linux systems and the basics of working in the CLI. Since we have virtualization from Red Hat, we will mean Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS;
5. Know and be able to use yum, less, grep, wget, rpm, vi.

I deliberately used the words “to be familiar” and “understand a little”, because in order to start working with this virtualization, it is not necessary to be an advanced administrator of Linux systems, and network and storage gurus.

About preparing for this exam

Suppose we are familiar with all the above points, it remains to deal with the virtualization itself.

On the Red Hat website, you can view a list of required skills that will be useful for the exam:

1. Installing Red Hat Virtualization Manager (RHEVM);
2. Install and configure the RHV hypervisor;
3. Creating a virtual data center, connecting hosts, disk storage, network configuration;
4. Manage users and roles;
5. Import installation media;
6. Creation of virtual machines, templates and VM pools;
7. Portal management and management.

The surest and most reliable delivery option is to complete the RH-318 Red Hat Virtualization course, which explains most aspects of this virtualization system, as well as provides relevant practical skills in deploying the management part, hypervisors and virtual machines. I would strongly recommend to pre-listen to this course.

Self-training

The Red Hat portal has a wonderful library for all products, including Red Hat Virtualization. From the entire large list, I would recommend reading the following documents:

1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux. System Administrator's Guide . For unfamiliar with RHEL, or for those who want to refresh their knowledge;
2. Installation Guide . Install and configure Red Hat Virtualization Manager;
3. Introduction to the Administration Portal . Admin Portal, Appearance and Navigation;
4. Administration Guide . Actually, the most important system administration document;
5. Introduction to the User Portal . User portal. Appearance and basics of navigation;
6. Virtual Machine Management Guide . Virtual machine management;
7. Technical Reference . For those who want to dig deeper. A more detailed description of the architecture and how it all works.

While studying the documentation, I strongly recommend putting out the most interesting information and the fact that it is “easy to forget in a couple of days” in a separate cheat sheet to quickly remember when it is needed. This is a great option for saving commands, parameters, keys, paths and other things.

At the time of reading the documentation, the best option would be to check everything read in practice. For a test bench, a couple of servers \ virtual machines and shared storage are enough. If possible, it is better to use all storage connectivity options, but if FC can be omitted, then I highly recommend working with NFS and iSCSI.

In order to try all this in action, there are two options:

Register on the Red Hat portal using a corporate account and get trial licenses for Enterprise Linux, as well as Red Hat Virtualization. Using the obtained licenses, with the help of guides, you can easily practice setting up the system and managing virtual machines. This option is somewhat more complicated, because you will still need to get acquainted with the subscription manager, but if you seriously deal with Red Hat products, you will have to learn this anyway, and the RHV documentation describes all the necessary steps.

The second option is to use CentOS 7 OS and oVirt virtualization system. As for me, this option is more acceptable, given the small difference between Red Hat products and the systems from which they grow. The difference in setting up and managing the virtualization environment will be minimal, and the need to use trial licenses already disappears, virtualization will work and be updated without subscriptions.

The small document on the oVirt website describes the installation process for RHEL / Fedora / CentOS. All further actions to manage the system are similar, or as close as possible to the documentation provided on the Red Hat portal.

In custody

That's all I wanted to say about preparing for this exam. Knowledge of virtualization technologies and Linux systems will be a big plus in preparation, and reading documentation and practice is almost a success.
Even if you do not have plans for passing this exam, according to the documents provided in this article, you can safely deploy your virtualization and practice (maybe someone will like it). Well, those who are going to take this exam, I wish you good luck. I hope that this information will be useful to you.

Little nuances

At the moment, the virtualization system of version 4 has already been released, while the new version of the exam is still missing and is available only for version 3.5. There is no fundamental difference between version 4 and 3.5, therefore, I advise you to immediately read the documentation on the new version, this should not be much affected by the exam.

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PS: I strongly urge not to start arguing about which virtualization is better; this material describes only the preparation process and does not call to abandon anything in favor of Red Hat solutions.