The performance-based Red Hat Certified Specialist in Services Management and Automation exam (EX358) tests your knowledge in configuring and managing standard Linux services as well as automating the configuration of services. The skills tested in this exam are the foundation for system administration across all Red Hat® products.

This exam is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 and Ansible 2.9.

• System administrators responsible for managing large enterprise environments
• System administrators responsible for managing network services
• Red Hat Certified Engineers interested in becoming a Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA).

• Be a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) or Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA), or have comparable work experience and skills.
• Take our free assessment to find the course that best supports your preparation for this exam.
• Take Red Hat Services Management and Automation (RH358), or have comparable work experience and skills.

Study points for the exam

In addition to the objectives listed below, candidates for the Red Hat Certified Specialist in Services Management and Automation exam should consult the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) exam objectives and be capable of RHCE-level tasks, as some of these skills may be required in order to meet the objectives for this exam.

Red Hat Certified Specialist in Services Management and Automation candidates should be able to accomplish the following without assistance. Candidates should be prepared to perform these tasks both manually and using Ansible automation.

Manage Network Services

• Configure network clients to use either a dynamically or statically assigned address
• Work with both IPv4 and IPv6

Manage Firewall Services

• Configure system firewalls to allow access to specific services or ports
• Configure system firewalls to allow or deny access from only specific network domains or IP subnets

Manage SELinux

• Configure SELinux booleans for a given service
• Configure a file or directory’s SELinux context

Manage system processes

• Configure system processes to start on boot
• Prevent a system process from starting

Manage Link Aggregation

• Create a network team interface consisting of two network interfaces
• Make a network team interface persistent across boots
• Assign a network address to a network team interface
• Configure a teamd runner

Manage DNS

• Configure a caching nameserver
• Configure an authoritative nameserver using a partially completed zone file
• Configure forward and reverse lookups for both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses

Manage DHCP

• Configure address assignment within a specified address range
• Configure a specific address assignment to a designated host
• Configure address assignments for both IPv4 and IPv6

Manage printers

• Create and manage a printer queue for a network printer
• Manage existing printer queues

Manage Email services

• Configure an email server to forward email to an outbound mail relay
• Use mail clients to read or send email

Manage a MariaDB database server

• Install and configure a basic MariaDB service
• Restrict access to a MariaDB server to specific network addresses
• Create a MariaDB database
• Manage MariaDB database users and access rights
• Add records to an existing MariaDB database
• Issue simple SQL queries against a MariaDB database
• Create a MariaDB backup
• Import a MariaDB database from a backup

Manage HTTPD web access

• Install and configure Apache
• Install and configure NGINX
• Configure an alternate document root
• Configure an alternate web access port
• Configure name-based virtual hosts
• Configure a secure web server (HTTPS)
• Provide a static cache to speed up HTTP response time
• Configure an HTTP HAProxy load balancer
• Terminate HTTPS Connections

Manage iSCSI

• Provide and configure iSCSI targets
• Configure iSCSI initiators to connect persistently to iSCSI targets
• Restrict access to iSCSI services to specific clients and networks

Manage NFS

• Configure persistent NFS exports
• Configure an NFS client to mount an NFS export persistently
• Restrict access to NFS exports to specific clients and networks

Manage SMB

• Configure SMB shares
• Create and manage SMB users
• Create SMB only users
• Restrict access to SMB shares
• Mount a SMB share
• Perform a multiuser SMB mount

Use Ansible to Configure Standard Services

• Create and modify playbooks
• Understand and utilize inventory files
• Use variables in playbooks
• Work with RHEL System Roles

As with all Red Hat performance-based exams, configurations must persist after reboot without intervention.

Red Hat encourages you to consider attending Red Hat Services Management and Automation (RH358) to help prepare.

Attendance in these classes is not required; students can choose to take just the exam.

While attending Red Hat classes can be an important part of your preparation, attending class does not guarantee success on the exam. Previous experience, practice, and native aptitude are also important determinants of success.

Many books and other resources on system administration for Red Hat products are available. Red Hat does not endorse any of these materials as preparation guides for exams. Nevertheless, you may find additional reading helpful to deepen your understanding.

This course will help your staff develop key skills in managing and automating common services that support and are used by your business-critical applications. These skills can assist your team in reducing time to deployment, improving reliability, and ensuring architectural compliance, allowing resources to be spent on improving rather than just running your business.

In this course, you will learn key system administration skills needed to set up and provide network services that are frequently used by servers and their applications in enterprise data centers. You will gain an understanding of how to manually manage these services, and you will also prepare Ansible playbooks to automate manual configuration tasks and perform them at scale.