Solaris Exam Preparation Courses

There are three preparation courses available for Solaris certification:

• Solaris 9 System Administration I (SA-238)

• Solaris 9 System Administration II (SA-288)

• Solaris 9 Operating Environment TCP/IP Network Administration (SA-389)

Let s examine what material is covered in each exam.

Fundamentals of Solaris 9 Operating Environment for System Administrators (SA-118)

If you re completely new to Solaris, you may benefit from taking one or more of the exams that do not lead to a specific certification test. The Fundamentals of Solaris 9 Operating Environment for System Administrators (SA-118) is one such course. It is designed to endow up and coming administrators with basic UNIX skills, including the following:

• Navigating the hierarchical file system

• Setting file permissions

• Using the vi visual editor

• Using UNIX shells

• Understanding Solaris network facilities

After completing the course, students should feel confident performing the following tasks :

• Change settings in configuration files

• Create new directories

• Create new text files and edit existing files using vi

• Identify and send signals to user processes

• Move around mounted file systems

• Set permissions on existing files

• Use a shell to execute commands

• Use the Common desktop environment (CDE)

Solaris 9 System Administration I (SA-238)

The SA-238 course aims to build a set of core skills required to administer stand-alone Solaris systems. Typically, these are the skills required to install and run a single Solaris system, including:

• Management of disks, file systems, and partitions

• Backup and restore techniques

• User and group administration

• Hardware device configuration

• Process management and operations

The course lasts for five days and costs $2,495. After completing the course, newly skilled sysadmins should feel confident performing the following tasks:

• Add users and groups to a system

• Add new packages

• Back up a system, and recover a lost file system

• Change a system s run level (init state)

• Configure hardware devices

• Control user and system processes

• Manage system printing

• Mount file systems

• Patch existing packages

• Recover damaged file systems using fsck

• Review disk layout using format

• Secure a system

• Set up system-wide shell configurations

• Shut down a system

• Understand client/server architectures

• Understand the root file system and the UNIX directory structure

• Use eeprom to set boot parameters

• Use file permissions to implement file security

The course consists of 17 different modules, including the following topics:

• Module 1: Introduction to Solaris 9 Operating Environment Administration

• Module 2: Adding Users

• Module 3: System Security

• Module 4: The Directory Hierarchy

• Module 5: Device Configuration

• Module 6: Disks, Slices, and Format

• Module 7: Solaris ufs File Systems

• Module 8: Mounting File Systems

• Module 9: Maintaining File Systems

• Module 10: Scheduled Process Control

• Module 11: The Print Service

• Module 12: The Boot PROM

• Module 13: System Initialization of the boot process

• Module 14: Installing the Solaris 9 Operating Environment on a Stand-alone System

• Module 15: Installation of Software Packages

• Module 16: Administration of Software Patches

• Module 17: Backup and Recovery

Solaris 9 System Administration II (SA-288)

The SA-288 course aims to build a set of core skills required to administer networked Solaris systems. Typically, these are the skills required to install and run multiple Solaris systems, and Solaris networks. The course lasts for five days and costs $2,495. After completing the course, newly skilled network admins should feel confident performing the following tasks:

• Centralize home directory access using the automounter

• Configure the major naming services

• Installation of multiple Solaris client systems using JumpStart

• Installation of Solaris server systems

• Manage systems remotely

• Share disks using the Network File System (NFS) protocol

• Use the system log facility

• Using the admintool

• Volume management

The course consists of 13 different modules, including the following topics:

• Module 1: The Solaris 9 Network Environment

• Module 2: Network Models

• Module 3: Solaris syslog

• Module 4: Introduction to Virtual Disk Management

• Module 5: Introduction to Swap Space and Pseudo File Systems

• Module 6: Configuring the NFS Environment

• Module 7: CacheFS File Systems

• Module 8: Using Automount

• Module 9: Naming Services Overview

• Module 10: NIS Configuration

• Module 11: Solstice AdminSuite

• Module 12: JumpStart

• Module 13: System Administration Workshop

Solaris 9 Operating Environment TCP/IP Network Administration (SA-389)

The SA-389 course aims to build a set of core skills required to administer Solaris networks. Typically, these are the skills required to install and run networks that are based around Solaris systems. The course lasts for five days and costs $2,795. The course consists of 14 different modules, including the following topics:

• Module 1: Network Models

• Module 2: Introduction to Local Area Networks

• Module 3: Ethernet Interface

• Module 4: ARP and RARP

• Module 5: Internet Layer

• Module 6: Routing

• Module 7: Transport Layer

• Module 8 Client-Server Model

• Module 9: DHCP

• Module 10: Introduction to Network Management Tools

• Module 11: Domain Name System

• Module 12: Network Time Protocol (NTP)

• Module 13: Network Troubleshooting

• Module 14: IPv6