 Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening wherever you're hailing from welcome to a special cube con EU edition office hours This office hour. We are going to be talking to our red hat certification team all about our certification program here at red hat And I'm very excited to introduce the one and only Randy Russell everyone Randy Please introduce yourself to the audience and Hi, I'm Randy Russell and I'm the director of the certification program at red hat Henry Hi folks, I'm Henry main and I manage the team that develops our platform and cloud certification exams which includes the majority of our exams that cover over OpenShift and things kubernetes Awesome, so This is cube calm and there are a lot of certifications people can take for kubernetes So, you know, what's let's tell folks a little bit about red hat certifications if we can All right. Well, so let me just talk a little bit about Certification program just very broadly You know Basically the thing that is really different about red hat certifications is that all of them are earned By taking hands-on exams and these are Entirely hands-on exams. They aren't mostly multiple choice with maybe one or two hands-on elements They are start to finish practical exams where you work with a red hat technology And you do things with that like you would do on the job And so these are three to four hour long exams and they're pretty rigorous, you know They we're big believers in in having people show what they know by doing it rather than asking You know answering questions about it Now the way we evaluate these is you know, we basically see if if things work We don't necessarily expect you to do things in a certain way We're very outcome based right because you know, first of all, there are different There's usually more than one way to accomplish something with a given technology The other thing is is sometimes there are people who might know some ways to accomplish something that we might not necessarily anticipate and so we're very outcome based did you make this particular feature of You know open shift and Kubernetes work or did you not right? That's how we evaluate and You know, we do all this evaluation, you know in a very automated way Which ensures that we're very consistent in the way that we do it and you know We do these kinds of exams across pretty much the entire product portfolio Now it is important to note, you know as we are still In the COVID-19 era that we actually have multiple ways for people to consume these exams The most recent way that we developed when we developed this last year On a very accelerated timeline. We had planned on doing what COVID sort of forced our hand to really put our foot on the Accelerator and get it done quickly is the remote online option So there is a way to take these exams from your home, you know somewhere where you're not having to go and have contact with other people But you know, we also have testing center exams. We've had those for for years as with you know And with the testing center exams, there are actually a lot of testing centers opening up in a lot of different countries in the world Obviously, there are some places where they are still under lockdown and and so the remote is a good option there But you know the testing center is a great option too if it's open and available in your area because sometimes your Your work your your home environment might not be the best place to take an exam because that's where your spouse is That's where your dog is Maybe your desk looks as bad as mine does off camera. Okay. Well, so that the problem is we're not going to let you Take an exam if your desk looks like mine does and and so testing centers can be very You know very helpful to a lot of people in terms of having a much more quiet You know Orderly environment to take an exam and then our you know, actually our oldest approach to delivery is in in a standard IT You know training classroom and we can do this both in public open enrollment sessions But we can also do this private at a you know at a customer site if there's you know They want to bring us in to do a number of people, you know on on site Not surprisingly, we're not delivering as many of these classroom exams now during COVID But you know, they are available again in some some areas in some regions That are perhaps not as impacted or are recovering more quickly But you know really I think most of the interest is in those first two ways and it gives people You know an opportunity to be able to take the exam on you know at the time, you know in place of their of their choosing so I'm going to turn it over to Henry now and have him talk a little bit about some of the certifications that we offer that are relevant to Kubernetes or OpenShift and just to explain to those who might not, you know be as plugged into the Red Hat world OpenShift is our branded Kubernetes product we do have some other things in there that in addition to Kubernetes But when you hear OpenShift translate that to Kubernetes because that is you know the foundation of what OpenShift is about So Henry if you would maybe talk a little bit about about these certifications Sure, so The first exam that I'm actually going to talk about Might be a little surprising, but if somebody were to come up with me and say I really interested in starting on an OpenShift certification path What would be the very first exam that I should take? It's actually not one that on the surface, you know you would think would have anything to do with OpenShift, which is our Red Hat certified system administrator exam and This is sort of our base exam that covers Linux system administration skills and you know, I Think it's probably a little trite to say it because it's said so many times, but as they say Linux is containers and In order to really Do well in the world of containers. I think it helps to have a really good foundation based in Linux So that would actually and and the OpenShift is about containers So that would be the first exam that I would recommend to just about anybody who wants to get a good solid start in OpenShift certification in Acknowledgement in fact of the Of the fact that containers are becoming just more and more critical to Modern IT. We actually revamped the Red Hat certified system administrator exam At the end of last year to include some coverage of Not OpenShift, but container related technology. So That would be the very first exam. I would I would suggest if you you know, if you want to both get a feel for what certification exams are like And get your foot in the door, so to speak another entry-level sort of exam On the path to OpenShift certification as we also do have a An exam on Specifically containers and kubernetes the red hat certified specialist in containers and kubernetes And that would also be a good exam To test the waters of a sort of certification, so to speak And then once you've built your knowledge up, we have A couple of exams that are focused on OpenShift specifically. We've got the red hat certified specialist in OpenShift administration Which you know, if you're somebody who spends your day Managing OpenShift clusters It would be a very good exam to look look into and then we've got a red hat certified specialist in OpenShift application certification, excuse me, OpenShift application development and The focus of this exam is more on demonstrating the ability to take an existing application and Port it to work with OpenShift You don't necessarily need to be specifically a developer if you're interested in this certification It's it's you know, just about taking that existing application you have and understanding OpenShift enough to You know deploy the application in OpenShift And then we've got the currently in the catalog. We've got a more Linux related certification But it also does touch on OpenShift, which is our red hat certified specialist in security on containers and OpenShift consignor container platforms. So those are our existing certifications But you know, as they say wait, there's more we actually Have a number of other certifications that that are in the works and that are planned for later on this year Awesome, somebody can advance the slide. You might have asked a question real quick or maybe two questions So first are there any special offers for certifications going on as part of cubecom? Um, I do not know but I am not the person to know ready So let me let me ask real quick Our marketing manager and and see I I'm actually I don't know either To be honest with you, I don't think there is but um, at least I know I haven't heard of it And I feel like I would have heard of it by now if we were Given this last day of cubecom So thank you. But the next question is what kind of benefits does A certified developer get like in terms of job exposure, etc. Also does the exam questions Are they on practical approach or theory approach? So you kind of mentioned that they're hands-on exams I've taken a few of these But what are some of those benefits that developer would get? well, so somebody who is Who is red hat certified is essentially being their skills are validated by red hat, right? It's it's that It's not unlike if you are going to have to have an electrician come to your house Now can you get somebody who can do the work and who is not a certified electrician? Sure Um might you be taking some risks? having somebody who is The only thing you know is that they claim that they are an electrician. Well, you know your house could go up in flames I'm not sure that it's always quite that dire in terms of somebody getting somebody Working with red hat technologies who's not certified. There's a lot of very capable people out there But there is that assurance when you have somebody who's certified That red hat has actually validated their skills And I think our particular approach that it is very hands-on and very practical I think that is the thing that that really does offer that assurance And so, you know, if you're the individual who is certified in that way You're going to be more valuable in a sense. Why because there's lower risk, right? There, you know, anytime you are hiring somebody be it on a contract basis be it as a full-time employee There's always that element of risk, right? Does this person is this person going to actually perform? and This is something that mitigates that risk and because the risk is mitigated you are more valuable and more valuable means You will probably get paid more But here's something else that I would say is that we very often focus on what is the advantage to that individual And I think it is that, you know, you have a good career path You know, you are somebody who people can feel confident is is able to do the job And especially with a hot technology like kubernetes, you know, it does put you in a very good position But I I always like to emphasize the benefit to the organization, right if an organization Looks for people who have these certifications or if they train people up and we have a great training program You know accompanying all certifications If they train their existing staff up and use certification as a benchmark To establish that they have actually acquired the skills We find that organizations derive huge benefits uh earlier this year. We actually commissioned a A idc to do a study this will be coming out very soon. So look for it. Um, we can't release it until it's official and finalized But there's actually some some really eye-popping numbers In there about the benefits that accrue to organizations that actually leverage certification and set that bar An expectation for their team. So yeah, there's benefits to the individual. It does give you that stature It doesn't make you more valuable But it really when you start talking about it on an org level it starts really really providing some big benefits to the organization So did I get everything or were there some other questions in there? I think you nailed it. So There was I think there was another bit in there that I can address So I think there was a question about are the Are the questions, you know based in theory or Practicality right and the answer is they're based in practicality. So When you sit down and take one of our certification exams You're going to be doing things or at least this is our goal that we strive for is you're going to be doing the sorts of things That you would be doing on your job or the things that you would be expected to do on your job and You know when we evaluate your work Um, we don't look and see did this person get a specific answer we look and we see does this service Does this service work as specified and sort of the Simple example that I always use is let's say for example We ask you to set up a web server. So You know, how am I going to evaluate your web server? Well, I'm going to connect your web server And I'm going to see you know a can I connect to it? B does it serve content and c does it serve the content that I ask for? I'm not going to look at how did this person set up the web server You know, did they use Apache? Did they use engine x? Did they use you know, whatever? You know unless unless I specifically ask for that. I I don't care what I care about is You know, I had a specification that said You know make me a web server and have it do this and connect to port 80 Yes, we've said for years that actually if you want to if you want to if you want to write a python script during the exam to You know answer the web at you know a a well-formed htpp request knock yourself out might not be the best use of your time But you created you set up a web server. Hey, congratulations And so yeah, it is it is very very grounded in the practical Yeah, absolutely, and I know this from taking you know the rhcsa I've taken the the ansible exam right like it's very much outcome driven in the sense of right like Use ansible to establish these things so they go and look for the presence of these things and actually use an ansible playbook to check Your output is pretty it's pretty awesome. So yeah, actually if I cannot give away too much here For the ansible exam We actually blow away Most of your systems and we use the playbooks that you provide And we run your playbooks and then we look for the evidence that your playbooks did So It is very much as you say outcome outcome based We care about the outcome. We don't care how you get there as long as you do your own work One question here about acs advanced cluster management. Have we been able to incorporate that into Any of our exams yet as well as stack rocks they're asking to Yeah, so Henry talk about that, but you know, I have flipped over to uh, you know We're open source and therefore we're kind of open plan here. So we've got we've got more certifications Around kubernetes coming out this year You know last year because we had to pivot very hard in our development efforts to make remote exams An option we have a bit of a backlog of some things to catch up And there's other things that we simply need to dig into because our customer base needs these skills out in the field and so Yeah, these are some of the things that we're looking at And I you know, I think Henry can probably speak a little bit more To some of the specific things that we're going to look at like like acs and so on great um, so yes, so um the acs we do have a planned exam. So what I actually have up here on the slide is is a road map and um, we are planning on doing Something both of course an exam around the advanced cluster manager The I will I will caution that the Dates here or whether or not even dates they're quarters of our Uh estimates and and so don't don't build any solid plans around these just yet, but um We are planning on releasing an exam on the You know the advanced cluster management product here probably in q4, which would be Toward the end of this year We you know haven't really sat down and and thought much about stack rocks Although security in general is is something that is At the forefront of our mind for for both certification and training um, a little closer to a little closer to now We are working on An advanced certification for cluster administration We are currently working on a red app certified specialist in OpenShift automation and integration which is designed to be a follow-on certification for the OpenShift administration certification. I mentioned earlier um, and then we are also beginning development on A product Related to providing Reliable storage for OpenShift clusters So we're working on a certification for The OpenShift data something called the OpenShift data foundation And then as I mentioned, uh, we are going to visit our attention to the cluster manager and We're also starting to plan for a certification on what we think is going to be a very important product, which is our OpenShift virtualization product. So Also toward toward the end of the year We will probably be working on a red app certified specialist in OpenShift virtualization certification. So um, you know the the stack rocks thing, um, you know that that's something to consider and And you know, you might even see some of these some of the shift based on, um, you know based on what we decided You know later on later on this summer, but right now this is what our roadmap currently looks like Wonderful Going back through can you explain more about red hat certification OpenShift application development? What can you tell us about that? I guess So, um So, uh, the basis of the exam as I said is, uh, we We set you down with an OpenShift instance. It's already been configured and We you know give you some existing applications and we say make these work with OpenShift and it's designed to test Uh specific features uh in capabilities of OpenShift That have been put there to actually make supporting an application and supporting an application in OpenShift easier um, I believe Oh, actually, I believe if whoever is driving the slides can Click on um, if you go forward, please Yeah If you click on the red hat certified specialist in OpenShift application development, that's actually a link I don't know. Yeah, let's see. I'm okay Yeah, that's that's a link. Well, yeah, it may be a little bit tricky here with the slides, but I got it though So let me actually step in with one observation about um about the OpenShift application development Um certification Is that it does presume to some extent that you already have an application, right? And that that application existed prior to your bringing Kubernetes into the organization And it's really sort of how do I take that? You know, I'm not going to say legacy app But legacy ish app and how do will you take that existing app and how do you? Put it into that that OpenShift environment But what I would add though is that we actually Are approaching it from the cert program in some other ways in addition to that. So for example, we have just uh launched a certification The cloud native developer certification that emphasizes corpus, right and corpus is a Java technology And that you know is also Cloud native focused and so You know one stream is you've already got stuff How do you get the stuff that you've already got into the world of kubernetes? But we're also beginning to develop some other things around. Okay, so you're building something from the ground up How does that look and that starts to be where you look at things like corpus Or you look at things like service mesh, you know another technology that I think becomes very critical in this kind of environment and so You know, there's sort of two paths really that you can take with this one is You know, here is the path to containerize the world as it exists today And then there's here's how you build your containers world of tomorrow your kubernetes world of tomorrow And you know, that's also some things that we're working on On the developer side, so You know, I think it's worth mentioning there because when you think about that that application development cert It has a particular focus and what we're you're going to see, you know over the you know The next year is that we're going to also start working down that other path of the cloud native path that you're starting with That assumption that this is where you started from Awesome So two quick questions and they apologize for being late Will the security cert ex-425 be updated to ocp-4x? soon I'm assuming Well, so to be honest, uh that particular cert It's roadmap is a little bit up in the air right now, you know, because I think there are some changes, you know and there are some things happening that We're figuring out what we're going to do with that cert So I can't I can't really make a commitment on on what we're going to do with that at this time fair enough Uh, and then obviously the next question I think it is a yes, but I'll just double check. Will this upcoming search count towards rhca. I'm assuming so Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. They will and and look You know not not to to make any promises here, but let's look at this. So right now You know, we've got we've got these You know four exams In certs right now that are, you know Kubernetes openshift focused Henry just described. I don't know. Is it Another six You know, if you do the math You can start to see where somebody could become a red hat certified architect solely by focusing on On on kubernetes and open shift. In fact, they could be a higher level architect because you know, if you go above and beyond the The five cert requirement, you can become a level two a level three and so on and so You can now, you know, it's going to be a possibility to be a an rhca Where it is your exclusive focus Nice That's amazing Yeah, it's very exciting actually. Yeah um Can we check what the specialist in security containers and open shift is? I'm not sure what you're asking. They're relieved. Um I guess they're asking about what the content is like there Well, i'm going to defer to henry on on just a kind of a quick overview of the 425 um Henry um It's um a combination of uh, you know, what are the things that you can do to both? Lock down and secure your Linux system irrespective of Irrespective of You know anything specifically container related and then also what are some things that you can do? to you know make Running containers more secure and what are some of the security features built into? Open shift and and to the question that somebody raised earlier Which is um You know, are we going to be updating? EX 425 and the the answer there is we're not quite sure What direction we're going with that particular certification the? exam itself is based on Open shift three so You know, it's a little A little behind the curve in terms of the open shift currency Got it. Okay, cool Well, let me know if that doesn't answer your question. Yes, is that is that what you were looking for or? Yeah, I think it yes. He says thanks. So yeah, there you go cool all right, so Yeah, he was under the impression that it was a new 425 coming, but it's going to be a revamp of some sort or um re-chittering of some sort now the 425 I I can imagine us doing a certification related to security because security is you know Not a small topic But I don't know if it would be you know in the form of an update to 425 or perhaps a a new certification all together right Fair enough All right, that's all the questions. I think if you've asked one. I haven't asked it on air. Please let me know Should we keep going randy? Is there more to go into? You're on mute randy randy. You're on mute ups Okay You would think you would think you know over a year into covid that one would not make such mistakes and yet I do that just about every day. Okay, so you would also think that if you're speaking it would unmute you, but you know That might be asking for too much Yeah, but you know what the thing is if it did that then it would be catching times that are you know You're saying something to your significant other or yelling at your good point. Yeah, maybe I don't want that Hmm So, you know, we've uh, we've covered all you know all the material we were going to cover You know, it wasn't going to be a deep dive into each one of these We just wanted to give people a a bit of a flyby on on what we have and uh, and you know a peek at the things to come because you know We really aren't going to have a very comprehensive You know kubernetes and open shift portfolio You know here we we already have one that I think is pretty comprehensive But then when you look at that roadmap that henry shared By the end of the year It's going to be that you know, you can get really really deep into this stuff with us and certify Across, you know, a lot of different capabilities. And so really it's just a question of if you know, if anybody has You know questions Comments cackling You know Anything they they want to bring to us Yeah, if you if if you have questions for the team here, please feel free to ask them That's what we're here to do is answer your questions audience so, um Let us know what you're thinking and We'll try and answer it Otherwise, let me ask this question. Um, you know, covet 19 hit You accelerated the remote, you know testing phase Or remote testing process like how hard was that because I can only imagine that that was An enormous amount of work in a very short period of time well I think it probably took a couple of years off of henry's life and made mine as well um Just to give you a little a little sense of it is that um in the last january You know, I had I hadn't decided that this was something that we are really going to have to do Just on its own merits and You know speaking with henry and you know the other developer manager on the certification team You know, we had ballpark that this was probably going to be uh Be a nine-month effort to really to really do this. Okay And so then um, you know come The middle of march was when you know things hit a fever pitch and Red hat basically locked down all of its offices And the world locked down and and our exam deliveries Sort of stopped basically because nobody's going to be going into classroom All the testing centers were were closed and so it became much more immediate and necessary and And urgent and in nine months was not really the answer anybody wanted to hear The thing that what worked sort of perversely in our advantage was that Because we weren't able to deliver any exams we could apply all of our efforts Towards actually getting this remote exam capability of off the ground because there's no point in doing Exam development if we couldn't deliver the exams, right? So we sort of put the pause on all the exam development And put poor the coals to developing this remote Capability so we were part of the way there in the sense that we already had some exams that we're running on remote cloud environments Yeah, because the footprint required it So that gave us a bit of a head start, but we actually introduced A new element that really nobody else was doing and that is actually using a live usb image To have this terminal to connect to those Remote instances and that would give you actually a much Greater reliability than you see in some other exams that are being done this way And also much better security just to be really blunt about it It's a lot harder for somebody to check notes or ping somebody who knows, you know You know a little more than they do if they're in this very controlled Environment so, you know, we had this, you know, we had a lot of development to do on a lot of fronts To make this work to, you know, go beyond the testing center to make everybody a testing center But by pouring all of our coals to it, we were able to actually begin piloting our, you know, our our MVP if you will about Two months after we started working on it And we were able to actually launch it to the public Four months and you know, Henry deserves a lot of credit to this because our initial goal for the for the public Delivery which again was less than half of what we had estimated it would take Our initial goal was to just have the rhcsa and rhce exams But we ended up actually having both of them and having the open shift admin and the open shift developer exams as well when we launched in august and it really just It was a consequence of everybody feeling this sort of existential need to get this done And just focusing on getting it done getting a lot of support from other teams within red hat and You know just doing everything we could and kind of being agile and flexible in the approach we took You know, we approached this project in some ways that were very different than some some things we've we'd done before But it's because we did have this sort of existential threat to our program. Yeah I mean the fact that you crammed nine months worth of work Into four is just flat out impressive like of over 50 percent reduction is amazing Uh, um, yeah, well when you get when you get to drop everything else it kind of helps Yeah, I guess so, huh But even then even then it required a really really exceptional effort. Um, you know from Henry and his team Greg cable the other manager, um, you know managing a development team within the CERC team He and his team, you know, it was uh, you know, it was all hands on deck and we we had a lot of support again from You know from other parts of red hat as well who understood the need to get behind this and help us to make it happen I mean, you know, it's it touches a lot more than just the technical pieces, you know It's how you know, how is this going to be? Scheduled sold, you know, is are there any are there any legal ramifications to this because now you're You know watching somebody in their home as opposed to, you know, this third party testing center You know, are there any data privacy consideration? So there were just a million things that we had to We had to sort out and we got so much support To to do that So, you know as much as I have to credit Henry and his team for a lot of the a lot of the work here We we really did get a lot of support from others within red hat And the chat is very much appreciative of your efforts, right like that While each sherry points out he says thank you for remote delivery. It is a blessing in this region. COVID or not I used to fly to do an exam, right? Like that's Remote delivery is so so so so appreciated. We know it has taken time and was not trivial Your trailblazer here as far as I'm concerned and it's only going to get better. I bet says j JD Andrea, so yeah So good. Thanks there, but a couple questions Will red hat prepare a telco specific open shift certification? Well, you know, that's that's really kind of interesting because We actually have have tried to target telco a bit on the open stack side, right? Uh and because we've Got interest, you know that we have a pretty big customer base in telco and and we actually even sort of designed a a sort of telco focus program with the emphasis on open stack A couple years ago and and we did that because we were approached by a telco a major telco Saying we would like to put people through this program. And so that's actually a very intriguing idea is that Um, there may be an opportunity for us to do something like that That's something I might have to take a closer look at because it's it's certainly a very important constituency within You know red hats, uh red hats customer base and and there might be some opportunity there Absolutely, uh a question about the learning subscriptions um The exam vouchers expire now. I don't know anything about like Terms and links or anything like that with the learning subscriptions. So forgive my ignorance here Uh, the exam of vouchers spires for rhls Why not make them independent of rhls as one would like to get training practice and then do an exam later on potentially Okay, well, so let me let me I try to see if I can answer the question is so red net learning subscription Is is a one-year subscription that provides access to all of our self-paced content be it um, you know, just sort of standard self-paced or video Self-paced it also provides access to other things like, you know, instructor office hours SPS expert, you know recorded sessions, you know, there's a lot of content And then if you get what's called red hat learning subscription standard edition You have you also get five first attempts at exams and two retakes, okay of, you know So what you know five one of those exams that you maybe didn't have so much luck with So here's the thing is that, you know, the you know, it is a subscription It's something that it's understood to be available to you for a year And the exams that are provided within it are expected in normal circumstances to be consumed within that time period Here's the thing though is once again the thing that's hanging over everybody's head for last year is covet And so what we have done is we have offered To we have extended multiple times since last year The eligibility records for taking those exams if somebody is in their red hat learning subscription has signed up for Um is signed up for an exam We have extended when they can take it beyond the end of their their their subscription The subscription itself for a lot of reasons is something we can't extend in that way But we are trying to at least, you know, meet people's needs by extending their exams And it is extending it independently of the subscription itself again the mechanics from, you know, You know financials and legal and all that become really complicated And that's why we can't do the subscription itself But at least we can do the exams and and we have been doing that and we've done that, you know as recently as You know end of march extending everybody who was uh Uh expiring in april and may uh by 90 days Wow, thank you for doing that. Um Is there like a built-in extension now just out of curiosity? Yeah, so the way yeah, so the way it works, you know Just to kind of get into the weeds a bit with it is that if you have a red hat learning subscription And you and you register for an exam. See that's the key is you got to register for Um, if you don't register for something there's nothing to extend, right? But if you register for that exam within the red hat learning subscription You know, basically we have a job that runs every week and it looks and it says Oh, is this you know, is this an exam that is owned by somebody who's Uh, who's you know subscription is expiring in let's say, you know april or may It's going to automatically set the end date, you know for you know must take by date Uh by 90 days and so you know If as long as you register for the exam and you do it before Your subscription expires It should get extended and if you do that it doesn't get extended Then you know contact the red hat learning subscription team and just bring that forward and that you know every once in a while You know things happen And and we might have a miss but that is the intent is to really extend that so that people have the opportunity To to take these exams even though their subscription may have ended Well, I can't thank you enough for doing that because I know that's going to help a lot of people in the long run, right? Yeah Well, you know, honestly, I keep hoping for when we can stop extending to be honest because that's going to be assigned to things are Coming back to her, right? But the fact is right now Uh, the things are still not very normal in a whole lot of places And so we are you know, we're going to continue looking looking on a periodic basis about you know, whether we need to extend Sometimes it might be that we might extend in certain places Over others, you know, you know, for example right now, though, you know, the news out of india is very alarming and You know taking an exam somewhere outside of your house might not be an option And it might be that taking it inside your house isn't an option. So, you know, we have to we have to Take these kinds of things into account and we want to err on the side of the customer at the end of the day Right Makes total sense to me, right? Like we are a customer-centric organization um Well, lead also mentions, you know lab hours For rhls. Is there any way to like independently buy lab hours? Um, you know, that's something that uh, you know has been discussed Um, I don't believe that we have an offering like that right now But that is something that we've looked into and we'll probably look at again Yeah, and I I think that's a fair question. Well, lead it definitely merits, um Some thinking So someone just asked in chat and I dropped some links for you Amy tech, how do I get my hands on free open shifts? There are two links there We have the dev sandbox which gives you an open shift cluster for 30 days And then we have code ready containers which you can download on one of your own systems and fire that up and have a working open shift environment there Uh, I will say that the system requirements for code ready containers are much higher than that of dev sandbox because the dev sandbox is Remote and you can log into that through developer dot redhead.com So feel free to click either one of those links and you'll have a open shift in your hands Which kind of makes me wonder, you know, is Is the dev sandbox something that rh, you know, the certification team could potentially Take advantage of in the long run. I don't know. I don't know what the goals there if they're connected together at all That's that's another one that I'll defer to henry on So the the big challenge I supposed to using something like the developer sandbox is At present We try to when when you're taking an exam we try to keep you corralled in a A sandbox of our own making And and it's you know centered around the fact that we we want people to do their own work and do it unaided Um, um and you know Yeah, it is an exam and we're trying to We're trying to tease out what you know about the given technology. So um, you know, uh We we we have given some thought to You know ways we might leverage existing resources, uh, but you know at present those those are still just you know Discussions and thoughts that we're having internally Makes sense fair enough all right, um Edward ask may I install a specific operator on the dev sandbox not yet. Um There's some arbeck issues We have to figure out on the dedicated side to give everybody olm In an independent fashion inside their dev sandbox. So yeah, we're working on that. So Um, that has been a routine question that we've been asked about the dev sandbox So yeah, we are up channeling that as the question's coming about it. Um Anything else you all want to share no more questions to be asked Or answered I mean in total do you have any idea of rough estimate how many exams we actually have? Just out of curiosity. Oh gosh, that's uh Uh You know, I I that's a number that I should just be able to pull out of my head But you see the I think there's too much flux for that, right? Like well there is there is because Because we're we're continually adding exams But then we're also occasionally retiring exams and then you start to have different releases of exams and it it's it so I'm going to I'm going to say Roughly three dozen Okay, that's all right. Do you have I actually I'm going to up that number. So if we count Do you have multiple versions and and and I I can I can spout this number because I was looking at a spreadsheet yesterday related to this Okay, it's around 50. Okay. Hey, there you go. Yeah Yeah, I mean that Aligns to our product portfolio pretty well. It sounds like so. Yeah Yeah cool So folks if you don't have any questions and if we don't have anything else to present we can Wrap this up, but I would encourage you to ask your questions now while you have the experts on the line um Okay, here's a good one. So I am studying for my first open shift exam How does the practice exam compare contrast with the real thing? I'm assuming the practice is like all the buttons and whistles and everything while the So, so what what practice exam are you are you referring to? Oh, that's a good question Which exam jd Andrea? It's an open shift exam. So there can only be so many Well, but the thing is we don't actually offer a a practice exam So there is a there is a comprehensive review that most of our courses have Yeah, but yeah, so but but it's not I wouldn't call it a practice exam unless Unless that's what Is that what's being referred to maybe JD can you please? Clarify thank you There's like a Oh do 280 so ex 280. I don't know. Okay. Well, yeah, so okay So yeah, so I was just what I was trying to establish is is if the preparation was using red hat training Or whether it was using some other Training because you know, we don't call that a practice exam But what Henry did refer to is sort of the comprehensive Lab that's at the end The best way to prepare For you know for red hat certification exams Guess what is red hat training You know, are we publish our exam objectives online? You know, anybody can take the exams. You don't have to take our training, but you know Our team works with the team that develops the courses very closely And they have the goal of covering every exam objective with hands-on labs So if you go online and you look at the exam objectives For the open shift administration exam You'll discover that every one of those exam objectives is covered by lab activities In that course and then at the end of that course as Henry mentioned, we always have a comprehensive You know sort of lab review in which you pull it all together because you know The way it works in a course is you learn a topic and then you do a little bit with that topic And then you learn a little more and do something with that topic And the idea at the end is to really sort of You know bring all of that together And and and you know and and kind of consolidate it and and have this kind of comprehensive exercise, which Will be very good preparation for what you would encounter when you go into the uh when you go into the uh Into the exam now with the course the course is going to teach a particular way of doing Everything right and as I said earlier, there's sometimes more than one way to do it And you know, there are some evaluation programs within the course and say well, did you do this right or did you do it? Not and those You know evaluations are evaluating whether you did actually do it in the way that you were being taught And so it's a little bit different than what we do Um what we do on the cert side. We actually have a bit more latitude on the cert side In terms of what would be considered the way to do it because as I say we're very outcomes based whereas in the course They're going to be very process based But yeah, it's it's great preparation. It would be what I would suggest to anybody even if there's somebody who has a fair amount of kubernetes and open shift Experience because there's all you know when you're in your working life There's always things that you don't use in your particular implementation of a technology And hence there's always some gaps in your own experience knowledge Even though you may be Mile as deep and some other things and so I would recommend to anybody even someone who's a very you know experience kubernetes open shift practitioner that look You know do the course so that you fill those gaps because There's going to be some it's the way it works for almost all of us. Yeah No, I mean I remember it was like 2012 I remember right before my exam for rhcsa I sat down in a coffee shop and I just fired up a bunch of vms and went through that review and just made sure I could check all the boxes and that list and Once I was happy I left the coffee shop the next day. I I think I missed one question on the exam So it is very open in the way that we tell people we grade things Yeah, yeah, I I That's the thing is that we actually try to provide a whole lot of information about what's there nobody should feel Taken by surprise You know occasionally people do but what it really means is that maybe then you know They didn't dig in quite as deeply as he did that day in the coffee shop and they didn't evaluate Their readiness honestly, you know, it's and that's a difficult thing to do sometimes is to be able to say Okay, do I really know how to do this and I would say the key is You know talking about you know how to use the training To its utmost is when you are You know when you are getting to the end of that course See if you can do these lab activities without checking the solution without referring to The guidance that's provided about step one do this step two do this Recreate it out of your own head because you're not going to have that course book there telling you how to do it You know our objective is to see that you can you can create it out of your head independently You know that doesn't mean that you know the documentation that comes with the product isn't going to be available because you know That makes sense that you should have that available and know know what you you know Know where to find things in the docs Sometimes is a really important thing to prepare for as well But you know being able to do those activities in the lab Unassisted, you know without referring to notes. That's one of the best things you can do exactly Yeah, I was going to I was going to say if you are doing that comprehensive review and you find yourself thumbing back to the course book Back to the specific unit where you're trying to remember how to do that thing You you probably need to study up a little bit more on on those times Absolutely. Yeah Awesome. Well, we are out of time. I greatly appreciate randy and henry being on here Um Regarding one last question regarding do 280. Is it done in a virtual environment? Pretty much everything is now, right? Um, all our all of our exams are done in a virtual environment, but um You know from the perspective of the You know exam candidate. You don't really you don't really notice that. Yeah It's all done using dms. Yeah Awesome Well, thank you everybody for the questions If you have not filled out the form to get your free open shift t-shirt. I will drop the link again and Thank you randy. Thank you henry for coming on. I greatly appreciate your time today And You want to share it? We'll fill out the link. I can send it to you. Here you go But that's all for now up next we have the conveyor team coming on to talk about all the hard work They've been doing so please stick around I'm going to be flipping the bits on the back end here and we'll be getting started with that. So Thank you again to everybody you had attended. Thank you. Take it easy everybody