RHCA done
Ok – here is the comprehensive list of the exams I did (respectively certifications earned) the last few years: RHCSA RHCE (RHEL4 and RHEL6) RHCDS RHCA EX333 EX401 EX423 EX436 EX442
That doesn’t look too bad 
All exams passed on 1st try, one (cluster) also without doing the training week at Redhat – of course I did trained myself and large parts are base of my daily work. What will be the next steps here? I Could do the virtualization or selinux parts. But it make sence to wait 2 years doing another expertise exam, because as far as I understood the RHCE gets extendend when doing so within 3 years. If I did the exams now I’d have to refresh my RHCE again.
stones on my way
It looks like there a some stones on my way gaining RHCA. Even if the roadmap looked straight I struggled getting my last exam (EX401) done. Not that the exams were too difficult – instead it turned out on tuesday during the training week that my RHCE was not current anymore. The notification email very likely was rejected by my previous company. Thanks to my boss I could do EX200 / EX300 instead which I mastered on friday after the RH401 training week. Of course I spent some time exercising RHEL6 features each evening. Now I have to get prepared for my hopefully last exam to RHCA on may, 27th.
EX436 exams done
On friday I did another step on my way to RHCA. Since I worked the last years always with Redhat cluster and GFS I felt confident enough doing just the exams without getting RH436. After some problems getting the exams started in time I could step through the tasks and finish in time. Many thanks to the Redhat guys doing the final grading! My exam results hit my mailbox when I came back home from Munich (about 3 hours drive). And I can enjoy my weekend knowing my percentage (92.3) 
lessfs first experiments
Already some month ago I read about the deduplicating filesystem lessfs on the lessfs homepage. Unfortunately I could not find dpkg packages for it which I really prefer for a clean install. But yesterday I was lucky and could at least find older source packages here. To get these files changed to the recent version and doing the package build step was not that difficult.
Also the basic setup was quite easy – but due to the limited resources on an atom netbook the throughput is not very satisfying – at least with the default lessfs settings. I´m pretty sure one can get more out of it with some test runs to find the best trade off values.
My first Idea of a testcyle which should obviously be scripted:
format base partition
mount base partition
format lessfs
mount lessfs
do a cycle of copies
begin again with alternative values.
Now the next problem immediately shows up – the number of parameters is quite high and it will be very time consuming to iterate over many possible combinations. I think I have to think about that
Coming up next RHS333
On monday my third step becoming a RHCA takes place. After 2 canceled courses it’s now held in Stuttgart. I really wonder who will be the trainer on this topic – maybe it’s Florian Brand … we’ll see.
To get in mood for one week training plus exams I think I deserve 1 or maybe 2 beer this evening.
[Edit 20100828:] The trainer was really fbrand@. And I did the exams successfully.