Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator Exam Readiness

LFCS is a Linux OS related System Administration exam provided by Linux Foundation. The exam tests candidate's abilities of demonstrating Linux OS related tasks in a working terminal environment they provided through cloud. During exam, you are fully proctored by PSI exam for the duration of the exam. You can check the requirements and policies to take this exam at the following link.

From now on, I will share about my personal experience of preparing and taking LFCS certification exam. When I decided to take this certification, I have very little to few knowledge about Linux OS and Linux commands. However, I had experiences of basic commands and working in a terminal before. So, I believed that if I work hard, I will be able to take that certification even if it is tough. At the start of my learning journey, I bought the bundle of Essentials of Linux System Administration(LFS-201) and certification exam itself from Linux Foundation site. So, I start by going through LFS-201 course and it took me a long time to complete that course as it is very long and I did read every chapters without skipping. It is indeed a great resource but I think it is a little time consuming to finish. However, after I finished the LFS-201 course, I decided to get more practice hands-on experience but I can't find too many resources about that exam at that time. After searching and digging into google more, I found the amazing course provided by Sander Van Vugt. It can be found at Orielly website at here.

Please note that here, I am not promoting websites or anything like that. I did not get any profit by writing this blog. My true ambition is that someone who wants to learn Linux and test their hands-on skills can get a good idea of where to learn and how to get certified easily. And I do not recommend taking any certification by searching exam question dumps and memorizing it. It is just a waste of time. So if you gonna do something, do it for real!!

To continue my journey, I got some pretty solid knowledge of Linux commands and how to manipulate files and config files in Linux System after completing Sander Van Vugt course. But I want to dive deep more into hands-on experience so I set up my own environment in my workstation by provisioning a Linux virtual machine and test commands here. I also recommend setting up your vm in cloud environment if you don't have enough resources in your local machine. You can use any cloud provider as you prefer like AWS or DigitalOcean or Azure. But it is very important to have hands-on experiences as this exam is all about performing your abilities. The Van Vugt's course also contains practice scenarios so, you can test them in your environment.

For exam domains and competencies, Linux Foundation, as of now (16-3-2022), described as follows:

• Essential Commands 25%
• Operation of Running Systems 20%
• User and Group Management 10%
• Networking 12%
• Service Configuration 20%
• Storage Management 13%

You can find more details about domains here.

My personal opinion is that you have to be really comfortable with basic file manipulating commands like sed, grep, awk and head, tail etc. Also, you have to be capable of finding log files of related services and how to manipulate them using commands I mentioned above earlier. You can also find another great resource about LFCS preparation in Tecmint blog here.

As for me, I studied using all those resources I mentioned above and further more, I also practiced about how to install and configure DNS server, how to install a web server (using apache or nginx) and configure them. I suggest you to practice every scenario you found therefore you have no problem whatever question you will face when you sit the exam.

To wrap up, don't aim to get higher score when preparing for exam. Aim to get more knowledge about what you interested in and always keep learning. I believed that if you have strong ambitions and dedications, you can achieve whatever you want. I am also learning and digging into Information Technology industry and if you want to ask anything about related subjects, you can always reach out to me by my email or my linkedin profile I've put in my blog. I am also seeking to know anyone who have similar interests and hope you can get something by reading my blog.