Even if you had a cursory knowledge of the IT industry, it is likely that you have heard of Red Hat.

Red Hat Inc is a household name in the IT industry and provides open source solutions to a vast majority of the Fortune 500 companies globally. Some of the major companies which use Red Hat are financial services giants like BBVA and Barclays, healthcare majors like HCA, energy giants like BP etc.

Red Hat’s flagship offering Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has been around for more than two decades. Red Hat also provides a highly customizable fully open technology stack which includes offerings like JBoss Middleware, cross-platform virtualization and cloud computing through CloudForms and OpenStack and many more.

In my view, companies which use the full extent of RedHat products benefit not only from its high customizability and open source nature, but also the fact that it is possibly the best open-source enterprise OS out there.

Currently, the Red Hat ecosystem has successfully acquired and integrated a host of diverse technology suites which make it perhaps the most comprehensive Enterprise stack in existence.

My Experience

 

When I started out as Red Hat developer years ago, the market was dominated by Linux enthusiasts with little formal training. As the years rolled by, Red Hat rolled out the Red Hat 9 in 2003 which many surmises to be the true advent of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). All of a sudden there was a huge demand for trained developers and admins for the RHEL platform, and salaries skyrocketed in response.

As I progressed to a management role, Red Hat drastically modified its services by first offering JBoss for server-based corporate software and suddenly organizations had an open-source enterprise stack on their hands and not just a Linux distribution. 2012 saw RedHat went upstream with OpenStack which became the de-facto cloud software for the enterprise community.

The organization was faced with a tremendous challenge at this point as it wanted to keep using its Linux codebase and integrate it with the clod but found that the asking price of developers and admins trained in Red Hat was becoming a heavy strain on the company’s wallet. In fact, the average salary of an RHCE newbie had become $75,00 in the US.

In India too, the pay scale for engineers trained on Red Hat reached around 8 Lakhs p.a. It was then that we decided to train our employees in Red Hat technologies with the help of a certified training partner, rather than hiring from outside.

Red Hat Training and Certification Path

Red Hat allows you to undertake training on your own or from certified partners and appear for the certification exams. The various training and certification paths for Red Hat are outlined as below:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux training and certification path aims for the Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) and the Red Hat Certified System Engineer (RHCSE) certifications for both new and experienced professionals and equips them with essential Linux system administration skills.

Source: https://d12vzecr6ihe4p.cloudfront.net/media/966928/red-hat-enterprise-linux-road-map.pdf

Red Hat DevOps

The Red Hat DevOps training and certification path also consisted of several courses dealing with the various facets of the Red Hat DevOps offering training and certifications on Open Shift Administration as well as training on Ansible and Tower automation focusing on task execution and management.

Furthermore, it prepares you for Kubernetes and Docker by training you to create and manage containers with Docker, Kubernetes and OpenShift Container Platform.

Source: http://www.cyberphoton.com/

Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application

The Red Hat JBoss enterprise application training program and certification suite consisted of a plethora of training to help you master this popular middleware technology. It consisted of courses to certify you in JBoss administration and development.

Source: https://d12vzecr6ihe4p.cloudfront.net/media/966927/red-hat-jboss-middleware-road-map.pdf

Red Hat Cloud Computing Certification

The Red Hat cloud computing training strand offers courses in Red Hat Enterprise virtualization to enable experienced Red Hat Enterprise administrators to create, deploy, manage and migrate Linux-based virtual machines on the Red Hat Enterprise servers.

Source: https://access.redhat.com/products/red-hat-cloud-suite

Red Hat open Stack

This set of training empowered existing administrators to develop advanced networking and cloud computing skills on the Red Hat open Stack environment and also offers the Red Hat Certified Open Stack Administrator and Engineer certifications.

Source: https://d12vzecr6ihe4p.cloudfront.net/media/965909/redhat-openstack-certification-tracks.pdf

 

Should your organization invest in Red Hat training?

On successful completion of Red Hat certified training and certification, some of them conducted online, it was found that the employees gained an in-depth knowledge of Linux as well as relevant technologies.

The candidates acquired the capability of performing advanced tasks including configuration, deployment, and maintenance of Linux Enterprise Stack applications as well as development in the RHEL platforms.

The clear-cut training and certification path provided by the Red hat certified training provider enabled the organizations to align the training as per business requirements and make the best of the situation. This not only boosted workforce morale but also helped us save a ton of money by not having to hire externally.