Thursday 13 September 2012

In The Beginning

I'm starting this blog around 6 weeks before flying to Delhi to immerse myself in a RedHat linux boot camp. My hosts will be Koenig, who have training centres in Dubai & India.

I have been working in IT for around 20 years, and for 15 years with UNIX albeit mostly the slightly non-standard IBM version called AIX. I've dabbled a bit in Solaris, HP-UX and Linux. I work as an independent contractor, so my training is self-funded and I need to find value in any course I take.

What is the value in going to India? The equivalent courses in the UK with exams would cost around 6000 GBP. In India the cost is just a touch over 2000 GBP. Even adding flight costs of 700 GBP make this very good value. Accomodation and food is included in the cost in India.

Why Koenig? So far my dealing with them has been good. Prompt replies and helpful advice. A little bit of web research shows mainly positive feedback from previous attendees. Some of it extremely glowing.

Why RHCE? I need to be where the jobs are. According to www.itjobswatch.co.uk website, Linux is a requirement in around 30x more jobs than AIX is. Everyone is using it. The RHCE certification is a highly respected qualification requiring deep understanding of the subject matter.

An ex-colleague of mine, JG, has beaten me to it and is currently in India doing the same course with Koenig. I think he is coming back this weekend, so it would be good to catch up and share some of his experiences. From the few texts we have exchanged I have learned that the course is intense, and I may well be working from 9.00 to midnight every day. Gulp.
It also sounds like he has had a few issues including Delhi Belly and some organisational problems. Some of the latter issues are to do with the training location. I chose the town of Dehra Dun (accomodation at The Country House) for my training and JG chose the same. On some levels it has been perfect - he is getting 1-1 training as noone else is there! The Country House is also empty. I think that is helping his study. However you cannot take Red Hat exams in Dehra Dun and must return to Delhi. We both opted for a "two take" regime that allows for an exam retake. After returning to Delhi the post-course support seems to be a little disorganised. It has made me wonder if I should just stay in Delhi and guarantee I get the same instructor throughout. Dehra Dun does look a little more relaxed than Delhi though.  

In advance of the course I am installing Centos onto 2 virtual machines on a cheap Compaq laptop. The VMs were created under Fedora.  I also have some training materials to read through.

It's always exciting to go somewhere new. India especially, it's a crazy place. We travelled to Kerala as a family last Christmas and had a fantastic time but you do wonder about the infrastructure management sometimes. I'm hoping that the 3 weeks will be productive, that there are no long-lasting power cuts, and that the exam is not too tricky...

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