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Home > Archive > Linux/Unix > March 2001 > Solaris Certification
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Solaris Certification
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| kwoksir 2001-03-10, 9:21 am |
| Hi, I would like to ask whether the certification exam for SCSA is difficult or not? Is the question straight forward or tricky?
I have 2-3 years Linux (Redhat & Slackware) experience and comfortable with the general administration. Is there a very great different between them?
By the way, is Solaris is free for personal use? Sorry that I am a newbie for Soloris. :P
Finally, any good book for studying or any web site related to SCSA? (include braimdumps, practical questions, etc, thanks) | |
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| Yes, Solaris is free. You can download it at www.sun.com
I don't know anything about the SCSA exam. I can tell you though that braindumps are discouraged at this site. The general idea being that they defeat the purpose of certification. | |
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| The SCSA is divided into two tests: SA1 and SA2. I only managed to take SA1 before getting sidetracked with an evil empire migration 
The SA1 is definitely an easy exam in terms of expected knowledge. However, the test questions are not straightforward and I think Sun is a little devious in one respect: SA1 is the only test I have seen with "Choose all that apply" questions that have checkboxes, but only one correct answer! You are left thinking that there has to be at least another choice you are not aware of.
You must know your switches! Just because you use tar -xvf or something similar every day doesn't mean you know all of the possible switches for that command.
You must also know NVRAM commands very well. This poses a problem with intel machines because this feature is not available. You will have to memorize these menus somehow.
The SA2 material looks a lot tougher. It is dealing with a networked Sun environment, utilizing jump start and custom builds. NIS and NIS+ are definitely heavy on this test.
Since I don't have a Solaris network (just Sun workstations) I don't have any practice with these aspects.
A final note: The *nix world is generally resistant to certs. Another *nix admin will smell a 'paper' SCSA a mile away
Your skills as a SA under Solaris, Linux, or similar are judged by a breed of people that bring a great deal of technical knowledge to the table. IMHO, it takes considerably less talent to get a Windows network up and running than it takes to run an equivalent *nix network. But that may be just my religious preference showing
If you want to be a decent SA, learn how to do things without the CDE (i.e., useradd, not the GUI User Admin Utility), know how to script in awk/sed/perl (these can vary by your job responsibilities), know backups (backups are not something you usually practice at home, partially because Sun tape drives are ridiculously priced), and network printing (nothing will incite a user riot faster than unavailable printers and broken e-mail  |
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