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Sun Certified System Administrator
 for the Solaris 9, Part II

• Delivered at: Authorized Prometric testing centers  Cost is $150.
• Prerequisites: Part I (CX-310-014)
• Exam type: Most questions are multiple choice, few are free response or drag and drop
• Number of questions: 58 +2 (two experimental questions do not count toward the final result)
• Pass score: 65% (38 questions need to answered correctly; 20 or less answers can be false)
• Time limit: 105 minutes  or 1 h 45 min.
• Practice exams: ePractice Exam for Sun Certified System Administrator for the Solaris 9 OS, Part II (WGS-PREX-S015C) is $75
• Reasonably good sets of questions:
  • PrepLogic CD-ROM to Solaris 9 System Administrator Exam Cram
  • Free Training - Sun Sys admin Solaris 9 Part II of II (CX-310-015) Free questions for SA-015 by Exforsys.com (along with test simulator).
     
• Supporting courses:
  • Advanced System Administration for the Solaris 9 Operating System (SA-299)
     
• Tips
   
  • You might benefit from Test taking strategy
     
  • SA-299 manual can really help to pass the exam.  If you do not have it most chapters content can be approximated by listings material (see SA-299 topics), but you do need to have either original or clone to prepare even if this means to create your own compilation of Sun materials from: System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration and othe publications.
     
  • Solaris 8 version of this manual is almost as good as Solaris 9 and sometimes can be found on eBay.
     
  • No amount of scavenging of WEB for exam questions and braindumps can replace solid knowledge of topics covered in the test and having your own Ultra 5 or Ultra 10 home machine for experimentation.  After couple of hours this erach bacomes counterproductiove and time should be spend on things that provide better return oninvestment.
     
  • Cost of Ultra 5/Ultra 10 is a fraction of the cost on one failed exam attempt (if you do not need it after exam you can always sell it from the price pretty close to which you bought it).
     
  • You need carefully study each and every SA-299 topics talking into account two exceptions:
    • There is almost no Management Console related questions in the exam.
    • There is  no smartcards questions.
       
  • Substantial percentage of the questions are on NFS, NIS, and Jumpstart (it looks like this exam pays disproportionably high attention to NIS). Questions on NIS and Jumpstart go far above the level on which a typical Solaris sysadmin usually knows those two subsystems, even if he is lucky to use them on the job,  so expect that you will fail no less then 10 questions.
     
    • Installing Jumpstart server on a computer and installing at least one client increases your changes to answer related question considerably. To experiment with Jumpstart server you need just two computers with Solaris 9 installed. Client should probably be SPARC as exam is SPARC biased. Jumpstart server can be a PC desktop or laptop. See Installing Solaris using JumpStart technology on an Intel laptop
       
    • NFS and NIS experiments just need two computers be it PC, Sparc or mix. NIS server can also be installed on Windows using Microsoft SFU 3.5 (free download). 
       
    • Sun has an excellent tutorial for NSF: docs.sun.com NFS Administration Guide [PDF]
       

    • An attempt to rework SA-299 Jumpstart chapter by Indian authors can be found at The Solaris Interactive Installation (I do not know why they called it interactive).  This is  a chapter from Special Edition Using Solaris 9 book. The article Building a JumpStart Infrastructure (April 2001) -by Alex Noordergraaf  also looks more or less close to content of SA-299 chapter on Jumpstart
       

  • You should expect to fail a couple of questions on any topic that you do not use, for example LDAP.  That means that you need to muster six critical topics (SVM, ACL, RBAC, NFS, NIS, Jumpstart and Webflash.) to max extent possible in your particular circumstances.
     
  • If you are using Solaris 9 System Administrator Exam Cram skip some long reference tables in RBAC sections, they are used in the exam. Use additional materials for critical 6 topics: they are covered incompletely in the book. 
     
  • Troubleshooting questions for NIS, NFS and Jumpstart can constitute a considerable share of the the "most difficult" questions.
  • The key to success is systematic study. Exam is not that difficult but the amount of martial that you need to memorize is such that it can take several months to do so. Do not  plan to prepare to the exam in weekend. that's a risky idea.
     
  • You do need to buy Web-based Practice Exam Without it your changes are to pass are significantly lower. Those $75 are a really good investment.
     
• Sun Microsystem Publications
  • Solaris 9 Installation Guide, Part Number 806-5205-05
  • Solaris 9 Reference Manual Collection, man pages section 4: File Formats, Sun Part Number 816-0219-05
  • Solaris Management Console help
  • System Administration Guide: Basic Administration, Part Number 806-4073-10
  • System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration, Part Number 806-4074-10
  • System Administration Guide: IP Services, Part Number 806-4075-11
  • System Administration Guide: Security Services, Part Number 806-4078-11
  • Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide, Part Number 806-6111-10
  • System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (DNS, NIS, and LDAP), Part Number 806-4077-06
  • System Administration Guide: Resource Management and Network
     
• Feedback

Here is one note that is relevant to the topic.

Passed 310-015 (Solaris 9 part II) today

Just passed the part 2 today and though I'd drop in a few notes here...

Whereas 310-014 was printing questions all over it (check my other review), questions were more evenly distributed amongst test objectives, with a little emphasis on NIS/Name Service and NFS. And installation methods (Jumpstart/Flash + NIS).

I've been a Solaris (2.6) admin for ~3 years, but only app servers (no nfs, printing, jumpstart, nis) so I was a rookie for much of the topics. I studied for about a month with 2 books, and did all the free tests I could find on the net.

I used CramSession's SCSA9 book (by Darrell Ambro) which covered almost all that was needed (the exam went into some details (ldap) that the book didn't cover that much).

I also used Osborne SCSA 9 book by Tim Gibbs but it's a piece of crap. I only read it to have another view of the topics. It's full of mistakes, bloathed with copy/pasted stuff from Solaris 8 that doesn't even exist in Solaris 9, etc...

Well that's about enough ... Good luck to everybody and happy holidays

Alex...

News

[Jan 9, 2005] Training For a limited time, purchase certification exams and save 10%.

Annotated Solaris 9 Exam Objectives

Describe Network Basics

• [SA-299 Module 1] Explain how to use network files to configure and test the IPV4 interfaces [Note: there is no IPv6 here]
• [SA-299 Module 2] Explain how to start server processes within a client-server model.

Manage Virtual File Systems and Core Dumps

• [SA-299 Module 4 ] Explain when and how to add and remove swap space.
• [SA-299 Module 5] Given a crash dump scenario, change the crash dump and core file configuration.
• [SA-299 Module 6]
  • Identify the appropriate commands and procedures to manage files; list, start and stop daemons; and manage utilities on NFS servers and clients.
  • Explain how to enable NFS server logging, and how to configure nfslogd behavior.
  • Given a problem scenario and resulting NFS error message, infer causes and select an appropriate course of action to resolve the problem.
  • Recommended Tutorial
    • docs.sun.com NFS Administration Guide [PDF]
• [SA-299 Module 7 ]
  • Explain how to configure AutoFS using automount maps.

Manage Storage Volumes

• [SA-299 Module 8]
  • Explain the purpose, features, and functionalities of RAID, and identify the guidelines to follow when using RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 5, including hardware considerations.
  • Define key SVM concepts, including volumes and state databases.

Control Access and Configure System Messaging

• [SA-299 Module 10 ACL] Explain how to (1)display and (2)set Access Control Lists (ACLs) using the command line and create default ACLs.
• [SA-299 Module 11 RBAC]
  • Explain fundamental concepts of role-based access control (RBAC), including rights, roles, profiles, authorizations, administrator profile shells, and RBAC databases.
  • Explain how to build user accounts, rights profiles, and their role when managing RBAC.
• [SA-299 Module 13] Configuring System Messaging
  • Describe the fundamentals of the syslog function including the etc/syslog.conf file and the relationship between syslogd and m4 macro processor.
  • Explain how to configure system messaging , including configuring the /etc/syslog.conf file, modifying the inetd process and using the logger command.

Set Up Naming Services

• [SA-299 Module 14 Using Name Services] Describe naming service concepts, and explain how to use the naming service switch file, the Name Service Cache Daemon (NSCD), and the getent command to get naming service information.
• [SA-299 Module 15 Configuring Name Service Clients] Objectives This module explains how to configure a client to use DNS or LDAP as the name
  • Given a description of a naming service client, identify the steps and commands to configure the DNS client and set up the LDAP client.
• [SA-299 Module 16: Configuring the Network Information Service (NIS)]
  • Explain the purpose, features, and functions of NIS namespace information, domains, and daemons.
  • Explain how to configure the name service switch for different lookups, and configure a NIS domain using the required maps, files, commands, and scripts.
  •  Explain how to build custom NIS maps.

Perform Advanced Installation Procedures

• [SA-299 Module 17 Jumpstart]
  • Explain the purpose, features, and functionality of the Jumpstart software, including boot services, identification services, configuration services, and installation services.
  • Given a scenario, explain the procedures, scripts, and commands to implement a Jumpstart server.
  • Given a scenario describing Jumpstart software configuration alternatives, explain how to establish a boot-only server, identification service alternatives, configuration service alternatives, and installation service alternatives.
  • Given scenarios involving Jumpstart software problems with booting, identification, configuration, install, or begin/finish scripts, analyze and select a course of action to resolve the problem.
• [SA-299 Module 18. Performing a Flash Installation]
  • Explain how to use the Flash installation feature, and describe the requirements and limitations of this feature.
  • Explain how to create and use a Flash archive and how to use a Flash archive for installation with Webstart, interactive install, and the Jumpstart software.