Red Hat Certified Specialist in Services Management and Automation - EX358 Exam

 June 17, 2024

I took the EX358 exam a few years back and therefore it recently expired. Since the exam is still available, I decided to take it again to renew my Red Hat Certified Specialist in Services Management and Automation certification and, therefore, extend my Red Hat Certified Architect certification.

This time around, I had the impression that the exam had changed quite a bit from the last time I took it. While the previous time the exam reminded me mostly of an Ansible certification, this time it reminded me way more of the old RHCE exam (the EX300). The bulk of the exam was about configuring the various services, while in the previous version, there was a lot more focus on the Ansible part, which is more like the EX294. It is also true that EX300 was phasing out at the time, but it was still an exam many people had, while EX294 was fairly new. However, as I suggested the previous time, it is still crucial to be able to perform all configurations manually and with Ansible because you can not know what you will be tasked to perform manually and what you will be tasked to perform using Ansible.

Usually, I’m very quick at doing Red Hat exams (my personal record is closing an exam in less than 25% of the available time, scoring 300/300), but this exam has been very long for me. I did not use all available time, but I got pretty close to it. It might be because I had to look up a few services configurations within the documentation since I’ve not done some of those configurations in many years, or maybe they really are that uncommon. So, a big suggestion on my side is to be sure you understand, at least, how to quickly retrieve the information you will need from the documentation you will have available (the Linux systems themselves, mostly).

Although the exam was a little challenging at some points, the experience was positive. I would suggest this exam to anyone who knows Linux and Ansible well to consider this exam if you want to achieve RHCA or just want to test their expertise in the subject.

Disclaimer: I have not personally paid for this exam since my current employer has covered the certification expenses.