I sat NCLP exam last week, and failed . This exam was definitely hard, specially for seasoned Linux hobbyist like me. Anybody who’s lives and breath with Linux admin everyday should be able to passed with a good mark. In term of question difficulties, I think most of them (70%) are considered as intermediate. It means if I can do the practicum for intermediate level, I should passed.

I failed in shell/bash scripting practicum. I know C#, VB, and .Net by hart, but not the bash scripting. I need more exercise and reading material on this topic. Another labs such as user administration, secure remote access config, and apache was cleared in a good mark.

I felt thrilled during the studying process in the last 7 days. I never touched Linux extensively in the last 3 years. Everything is .Net and SQL server in my world now. That’s way I was challenged when my supervisor approached me and asked to clear the NCLP exam. I’ve been there before, played with Squid, IPtable, smoothwals, Samba, etc. So, why not?

But It needs time to bring my brain warm up again, tune with the Linux style. Cramming 15 days courseware in just 7 days was very hard.

Another reason why I buy his challenge is because this is the lab exam. It’s not the written exam in multiple choice format . This is not simulation based, it uses the real machine, It gave me 2 servers to be accessed remotely. This delivery format really measures candidate’s skill. I think Microsoft should follow this way to deliver their certification exams. They can start in networking exam, it’s easier to setup lab exam in that topics than the developer tracks.

I’m doing the preparation again now, spend my weekend with Suse Linux stuff. I plan to fight back next week, hopefully I can pass at he 2nd try .