In the first installment of this series, I discussed the overall structure of Red Hat’s advanced certifications (beyond RHCE — RHCSS, RHCDS, and RHCA), and listed the objectives for the first exam of the RHCSS certification, the Network Services exam. By the way, all Red Hat exams cost $749, or $549 if purchased with the corresponding class. Most classes are four days, with the exams scheduled on Friday, and most classes cost $2,898, with the exception of the clustering and storage class, which is $3,998, probably due to the additional cost of enterprise-class storage hardware for the labs.
In my humble opinion, these exams are far too expensive. I think the “certificate of expertise” exams, which together comprise the advanced certs, should cost $250 each. This way the two next-step certs (exam-only, of course) end up each costing approximately what the RHCE costs, and the RHCA ends up being $1,250. There is something to be said for the current lack of study materials for these exams outside of Red Hat’s official curriculum — this places a premium on those who obtain the cert, because you know they either took the official approved course or they know their stuff. They didn’t cram for free, because there’s nowhere to cram.
  
|
Here are the objectives for the second exam in the RHCSS series:
RH423 Red Hat Enterprise Directory Services and Authentication
Course Outline
1. Introduction to Directory Services
* What is a directory?
* LDAP: models, schema, and attributes
* Object classes
* LDIF
2. The LDAP Naming Model
* Directory information trees and Distingued Names
* X.500 and “Internet” naming suffixes
* Planning the directory hierarchy
3. Red Hat Directory Server: Basic Configuration
* Installation and setup of Red Hat Directory Server
* Using the Red Hat Console
* Using logging to monitor Red Hat Directory Server activity
* Backing up and restoring the directory
* Basic performance tuning with indexes
4. Red Hat Directory Server: Authentication and Security
* Configuring TLS security
* Using access control instructions (ACI’s)
* ACI’s and the Red Hat Console
5. Searching and Modifying the LDAP Directory
* Using command line utilities to search the directory
* Search filter syntax
* Updating the directory
* Using graphical LDAP client utilities
6. Linux User Authentication with NSS and PAM
* Understanding authentication and authorization
* Name service switch (NSS)
* Advanced pluggable authentication modules (PAM) configuration
7. Centralized User Authentication with LDAP
* Central account management with LDAP
* Using migration scripts to migrate existing data into an LDAP server
* LDAP user authentication
8. Kerberos and LDAP
* Introduction to Kerberos
* Configuring the Kerberos key distribution center (KDC) and clients
* Configuring LDAP to support Kerberos
* Access control with Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL)
9. Directory Referrals and Replication
* Referrals and replication
* Single master configuration
* Multiple master configuration
* Planning for directory server availability
10. Authenticating Windows Clients
* Windows networking overview
* Configuring a Samba primary domain controller (PDC) using LDAP
11. Windows Domain Authentication and Linux Clients
* Active Directory servers
* Linux as a client
* Active Directory and NSS
* OpenLDAP
* Winbind
0 Responses to “Post-RHCE: Studying for RHCSS, Part 2 of 3: Directory Services and Authentication”