The Linux Foundation’s Certification Program is designed to give you a way to differentiate yourself in a job market that’s hungry for your skills. But, how well does the certification prepare you for the real world?
To illustrate that, we are featuring some of the people who have recently passed certification examinations. These testimonials should help you decide if either the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS) or the Linux Foundation Certified Engineer (LFCE) certification is right for you. In this latest installment of our continuing series, we talk with Ansil Hameed, a Linux Foundation Training scholarship winner who recently passed the LFCE exam.
It was my professor who demonstrated Linux commands back in 2006 while I was doing my Engineering Diploma Course. In 2007, I’d conducted a seminar on Linux File System Hierarchy Standard (FHS) as part of the course. While doing the research for FHS, I found many interesting things about Linux and came to know about open source. Another factor that attracted me was the Linux kernel, which is written in C language and I had a good grasp on C from my college days.
What Linux Foundation course did you achieve certification in? Why did you select that particular course?
LFCE course. The Linux Foundation free training helped me a lot to refresh my knowledge. The exam preparation handbook was a good starting point, and I got a clear understanding of exam and topics I’d yet to cover myself. I’m a self-learner, and I was confident that I could do the certification based on my work experience and practice.
What other hobbies or projects are you involved in? Do you participate in any open source projects at this time?
Pencil drawing is one of my hobbies. Lately, however, Linux has taken over. I have a Git account I use to publish my work. Recently I’ve been working on a Docker registry V2 search program written in Go. I hope it will be there in my repo in a month.
Do you plan to take future Linux Foundation courses? If so, which ones?
Linux Foundation OpenStack training is the one I’m planning to take, because of the industry-changing cloud technology offered by OpenStack. Also, I can learn about this technology from the industry experts.
In what ways do you think the certification will help you as a systems administrator in today’s market?
Linux Foundation Certification does not adhere to any flavor or distribution, so the candidates have freedom to choose their favorite distro from the list (based on their expertise which will add more value to their profile). Also, everyone know Linus Torvalds and his role in the Linux Foundation, which makes this certification more valuable.
What Linux distribution do you prefer and why?
I prefer CentOS, because of its enterprise-level quality and community support. I came from the Red Hat 9 era, so CentOS was a natural choice.
Are you currently working as a Linux systems administrator? If so, what role does Linux play?
I’m working for HP Enterprise as a Linux Delivery lead for deep technical support. I work mostly on migration projects where a system has to be migrated from proprietary OS to Linux.
Apart from the migration, I used to work on root cause analysis, performance evaluation, and tuning on systems running with SAP.
Where do you see the Linux job market growing the most in the coming years?
Cloud computing changed because of Linux and I can see the trend in the IT market of moving towards the cloud. Containers are a hot topic now.The native container support is possible because of the cgroups, namespace, and security features in the Linux kernel. This lightweight virtualization will grow in coming days because of the speed (in deployment, ship, start, stop, management, etc..)
What advice would you give those considering certification for their preparation?
Read the exam preparation handbook and go through the topics covered in the exam. Dedicate at least 1 hour to practice everything you’ve learned. Watch Linux Foundation free learning videos and read technical documents available for the distribution selected for the exam.
Read more:
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