What Opportunities Opened Up for You After Getting Your RHCSA Certification?

While I worked as a sysadmin, getting my RHCSA and RHCE weren't strictly necessary for promotions, but they helped build a case for my manager to promote me. Later, I went for the LFCS and LFCE, but those didn't seem to impact my promotion opportunities as much, possibly due to my growing specialization rather than redundancy with my existing certs. They were easier to obtain than the Red Hat certs, though.

From my perspective, the LFCS can be a great jumping-off point if you’re looking to get into Linux administration. In my experience, having Red Hat certifications is beneficial mainly if you work extensively with Red Hat systems, or if you have the time and budget to pursue them. Most of what I use daily as a sysadmin revolves around the LFCS material, with only a few exceptions involving iptables or nginx configurations, which aren’t as relevant to my current role. I also earned my CKA and CKS since I work on Kubernetes clusters regularly. Hope that helps!

In my experience, simply attaining a certification like the RHCSA might not directly lead to a promotion. However, it helps demonstrate your basic Linux skills, and it's more recognized in the field than many people think.

Throughout my career, which spans 30 years, I’ve only worked in a single place that utilized Red Hat. If I'd had that cert back in the day, it might have been different for me. Most of my experience leans toward Ubuntu/Centos and AWS Linux instead.

I got my first job in Linux before I even had the RHCSA; they hired me with the expectation I'd pass it, which the company covered. It wasn’t about promotion for me at that time, just about keeping my job. Since then, I've helped train others in newer versions as I moved on to different roles.

I landed a systems admin position at an MSP thanks to my RHCSA and experience. However, I didn’t see significant interest from employers for more advanced roles until I obtained my RHCE. That seemed to change the game a bit for me.

Both RHCSA and LFCS indicate basic Linux competence, but if you want to stand out, consider going for the RHCE. That being said, many jobs today need a wider skill set that includes cloud tech and tools like Ansible or Terraform. The RHCSA isn't bad, but it is more of an entry-level cert.

I haven’t earned the certification yet, but I chose to study for the RHCSA because most Linux admin jobs specify the distribution rather than the certification. I’ve seen lots of listings mentioning RHEL versions or CentOS. I think either path could work, especially if you gain some hands-on experience in a home lab for practice.