Introduction
The Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA, exam code EX200) is the foundational performance-based exam for RHEL. It is not multiple-choice — you sit at a workstation, get a set of tasks against two RHEL VMs, and your work is graded on whether the systems are in the state the tasks describe after a reboot. Persistence is everything.
What this course is
This is the KNZLABS RHCSA preparation curriculum, designed for senior IT professionals transitioning into DevOps and SRE roles. It pairs:
- 10 hands-on graded labs that you actually perform on AlmaLinux 9 VMs (bit-for-bit RHEL 9 compatible). Each lab has a bash grader that mimics Red Hat's pass/fail scoring.
- A 250-question test engine for recall practice — useful for written-style review even though the real exam is hands-on.
- A reference module per RHCSA objective domain (these chapters) covering key commands, common pitfalls, and the bridge to the live lab.
- A v10 deltas appendix noting where EX200v10 (RHEL 10) diverges from EX200v9.
How to use it
For each domain:
- Read the chapter once for orientation.
- SSH to the lab host and work the lab end-to-end without the answer sheet open.
- Reboot when the task list says.
- Run the grader. Fix what fails. Re-run. Goal: 100% pass on each lab.
- After all 10 labs, run the test engine in mock-exam mode (40 questions in 35 minutes).
- Reset VMs to clean baseline via Proxmox snapshot. Repeat the labs end-to-end until each one takes under its stated time budget.
Exam format facts
- Duration: 3 hours (was longer historically; current EX200 is 3h).
- Format: performance-based, two RHEL systems via virtual console.
- Pass score: 210 of 300 (70%).
- No internet, no notes — only the man pages and
--help. - Results emailed within 3 business days.
- The exam is delivered as kiosk mode on a Red Hat workstation; you don't see the underlying OS.
What the test engine can't teach you
Speed. Muscle memory. The flow of vgcreate, lvcreate, mkfs, edit fstab, mount -a, verify, move on — all without lookup. That comes only from working the labs. The chapters and the engine are scaffolding; the labs are the substrate.
Disclosure. All content here is original KNZLABS material derived from Red Hat's published EX200 objective list. No Red Hat exam content is reproduced.