[chr15p]

To me there are a few benefits of doing exams (at least the Red Hat ones that are not cheap, but well respected):

1) it looks good on the resume, which can help you get past the initial sift by people who dont understand what your experience actually means.

2) They give you the chance to fill in the gaps in what you think you know. My experience of doing my RHCE after 10 years of professional sysadmining was of the 14 chapters in the book I knew maybe 10 already and had never touched the other 4 because they never came up in my job, and the prospect of a looming exam gave me a deadline and the motivation to actually sit down and learn them, which then paid off later in other jobs that did use them.

3) to test whether you are as good as you think you are :)

If those don't speak to you then they're probably not super important to do, luckily we mostly work in an industry where experience trumps exams.

[anonymousDan]

Which book are you referring to out of interest?

[chr15p]

The coursebook I got as part of the training course, this was 5+ years ago so we got a physical book. I've no idea what they do these days but there's a list of exam objectives on the red hat website and that basically covers what you need to know

[gladiatr72]

Is there still an entire section on vsftpd?

[chr15p]

no. I don't think that was even a thing in the RHEL7 version I last did and the whole exam/course has changed a lot since then.

I'm sure there are lots of places that still use vsftpd though (I have a vague memory that it supported kerberos at least), so it might still be useful for some people