Passing Certified Openstack Administrator COA Exam
I had been planning on Certifying for Openstack since 2013 but at the time the certifications that where available namely Mirantis[1] and later Redhat Openstack[2] where heavily priced and you had to fly somewhere to be able to do the exam. Non-the-less, I planned to save up and put time aside to at least do one of these exams. Being in consulting business, my clients like to know that they are getting the best talent, what better way to prove this than vendor certification?
Enter Certified Openstack Administrator COA
I found out about COA, the Openstack foundation vendor neutral certification late last year and immediately planned to attempt it, the bonus was that it was affordable at $300 and was delivered online, so basically, I could attempt this anywhere with an internet connection. All I was left to do is set aside the time and am glad I was able to in May'17 Before we start off my experience, some notes from COA site
The OpenStack Foundation's Certification Program was created in response to a need in the marketplace for OpenStack certification that is performance-based, available anywhere in the world, and vendor neutral. With these as its guiding principles, The OpenStack Foundation developed exams intended to certify the foundational skills of a Candidate and allow them to build on that foundation with additional credentials for the particular implementations they find themselves using.
Prep
Even though I have been working with Openstack, I decided to approach the exam prep as a new student. I installed 3 separate installations of Openstack from scratch for prep using the following approaches;a) Installed Openstack by following the Ubuntu guide for installing openstack.[4]
b) Installed using the Redhat based RDO.[5]
c) Installed using Devstack installer.[6]
The goal was to go through the exam objectives [7] using each of the installations above, and at each step trying out GUI and CLI to achieve the objectives, I must stress that (a) really got me to appreciate and understand the swift project since I had not used it in production before. I also chose Ubuntu because it's the OS I preferred to use for the exam. You are allowed SuSE or Ubuntu for the exam. I used virtualbox for this experimentation. If you head this way I need to caution you, if you intend to have your virtual machines access internet or external world, make sure your Virtualbox has a bridge interface to physical Ethernet and not your wireless card. That simple fix kept me going in circles for 12 hours.
Exam
After 2:30hrs I shutdown my laptop and waited for the results, 3days later, the mail arrived, I had passed.So, what are my tips;
- Goes without saying, plan to have stable internet connection
- The exam allows for use of Dashboard or CLI to attempt questions, choose the easiest one for you.
- Feel free to skip through the question, they are not chained so you can quickly move around
- Keep an eye on the time, it does really go out fast
- Keep your environment around you clear as that makes the pre-exam checks with supervisor snappy
- You will need a laptop with a working camera and sound
- Passing score is 76% for this exam
Good luck on your journey
References
[1] https://training.mirantis.com/
[2] https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/openstack
[3] https://www.openstack.org/coa
[4] https://docs.openstack.org/newton/install-guide-ubuntu/
[5] https://www.rdoproject.org/
[6] https://docs.openstack.org/devstack/latest/
[7] https://www.openstack.org/coa/requirements