RHCE study guide
RHCE · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) is Red Hat's Engineer-level (Level 3) credential, and in the Ansible specialization it is earned by completing two exams: EX200, the Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) exam, and EX294, the Red Hat Certified Advanced System Administrator in Ansible exam. Red Hat's requirements state that Engineer-level candidates "must successfully earn both the foundational credential and its corresponding advanced credential within the same specialization," so the RHCE is a capstone designation rather than a standalone test. The RHCE study guide has 5 sections and about 1,657 words.
01Core Ansible Components and How They Fit Together
Ansible is agentless: a control node runs the CLI tools and reaches managed nodes over SSH, copying a small program (a module) to each host and executing it. Nothing persists on the managed node between runs, so there is no daemon to manage and no certificate to enroll.
370 words, about 2 min02Installing and Configuring the Control Node
On RHEL, dnf install ansible-core provides ansible , ansible-playbook , ansible-galaxy , ansible-doc , ansible-vault , ansible-inventory and ansible-config . Extra content (collections such as ansible.posix or redhat.rhel system roles , and community roles) is installed separately with ansible-galaxy collection install -r requirements.yml or ansible-galaxy role install .
296 words, about 1 min03Managed Node Preparation and Ad Hoc Commands
A reachable SSH service, a user account with the control node's public key in ~/.ssh/authorized keys , sudo rights if tasks need root (NOPASSWD for fully non-interactive runs, otherwise supply -K ), and a Python interpreter for the modules being used. Nothing else is installed on the target.
325 words, about 2 min04Plays, Playbooks, Roles, Variables and Facts
A playbook is a YAML list of plays. Each play names a hosts pattern plus tasks or roles , and may set become , vars , vars files , gather facts , serial , pre tasks , post tasks , handlers and tags .
358 words, about 2 min05Automating Standard System Administration Tasks
Package management: dnf (or package ) with name and state: present latest absent . Services: service / systemd with state and enabled - set both, since starting a service does not enable it at boot.
308 words, about 2 min