Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Administration Training Course

Course overview

Linux administrators are expected to keep production services available while applying patches, controlling privileged access, diagnosing performance issues and meeting audit requirements. This course prepares experienced IT professionals to administer Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems with repeatable operational methods rather than ad hoc command-line fixes. Participants work through the tasks that affect service reliability: provisioning hosts, managing storage, securing network services, recovering failed boot environments and standardising administration across multiple servers.

The course covers RHEL 9 administration from system installation and package lifecycle management through SELinux, systemd, LVM, Stratis, networking, firewalling, DNS client configuration, containers and automation. Participants gain practical command of Red Hat tools including dnf, systemctl, journalctl, nmcli, firewall-cmd, semanage, podman and Ansible. Advanced modules address performance monitoring, resource controls, kernel tuning, backup and recovery, automated patching, and the operational use of Red Hat Satellite for managed estates.

Instruction combines technical demonstrations with guided administration labs on RHEL systems configured to resemble a corporate environment. Each participant investigates incidents, implements configuration changes, validates service health and records the commands, policies and rollback actions used. They leave with a completed RHEL administration runbook and an automation portfolio containing Ansible playbooks, system configuration templates and an operational improvement plan that can be adapted for their own estate.

The course is suited to administrators moving beyond basic Linux support, infrastructure engineers responsible for RHEL platforms, and technical leads who need stronger control over Linux service operations.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Configure RHEL 9 hosts using dnf repositories, subscription services, system roles and persistent network profiles
• Administer users, groups, sudo policies, ACLs and SSH access controls using least-privilege methods
• Create and recover LVM, Stratis, XFS and ext4 storage configurations, including snapshots and quota controls
• Manage systemd services, targets, timers and journal logs to diagnose and restore failed Linux services
• Apply SELinux enforcing policies using labels, booleans, audit records and custom file-context rules
• Secure RHEL network services with firewalld zones, rich rules, network bonding and NetworkManager profiles
• Build and run rootless containers with Podman, persistent volumes, systemd-generated service units and image registries
• Produce Ansible playbooks and a documented RHEL operations runbook for repeatable configuration, patching and recovery

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Linux System Administrators — who operate RHEL servers and need repeatable methods for secure, reliable administration
• Infrastructure Engineers — who design and support Linux platforms across virtualised, cloud and on-premises environments
• Site Reliability Engineers — who need stronger host-level troubleshooting, service recovery and configuration automation skills
• Systems Engineers — who manage storage, networking, identity and application dependencies on enterprise Linux servers
• Technical Support Engineers — who investigate escalated RHEL incidents involving boot, service, access or performance failures
• IT Operations Team Leads — who need to standardise RHEL operating procedures and assess administration controls across their team

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should already be comfortable working at a Linux shell and editing files with a text editor such as vim or nano. The course assumes practical familiarity with directories, permissions, processes, basic TCP/IP concepts, SSH, common shell commands and the purpose of package managers. Prior exposure to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux or another RPM-based distribution is strongly recommended. Participants should be able to interpret simple command output and follow configuration procedures. Prior Ansible, container or Red Hat Satellite experience is not required; these tools are introduced and practised during the course.

Training methodology

The instructor uses short technical briefings to explain RHEL architecture and then moves participants into configured lab environments for each administration task. Labs include repairing a broken boot path, restoring an unavailable service from journal evidence, applying SELinux corrections, building resilient storage and automating a baseline server build with Ansible. Small-group incident reviews require participants to compare diagnostic evidence and defend remediation choices. On the final day, each participant consolidates validated commands, playbooks, rollback steps and operational controls into an application plan for a RHEL environment.

Course outline

Day 1: RHEL platform foundations and host lifecycle

• RHEL 9 architecture, support lifecycle and subscription concepts
• Installation methods and post-installation host baseline
• Red Hat Subscription Management registration and entitlement status
• DNF repositories, modular streams and package transactions
• Boot process from firmware through GRUB2 and systemd targets
• Filesystem hierarchy, mount units and persistent fstab entries
• Cockpit web console for host inspection and administration

Workshop: Provision a RHEL host, register it, configure approved repositories and produce a documented build baseline.

Day 2: Identity, permissions and privileged access

• Local user and group lifecycle with useradd and groupadd
• Password ageing, account expiry and shadow file controls
• POSIX permissions, umask values and special permission bits
• Access control lists with setfacl and getfacl
• Sudoers policy design with visudo and command restrictions
• SSH daemon hardening, key authentication and client configuration
• Central identity integration concepts using SSSD and LDAP

Workshop: Implement a role-based access model for operations, application support and auditors, including sudo and SSH controls.

Day 3: Storage administration and data recovery

• Block device discovery with lsblk, blkid and udev identifiers
• GPT partitioning with parted and persistent device naming
• LVM physical volumes, volume groups and logical volumes
• XFS and ext4 filesystem creation, growth and repair
• LVM snapshots and data recovery planning
• Stratis pooled storage and managed filesystems
• Disk quotas, autofs maps and network filesystem mounts

Workshop: Build a multi-tier storage layout with LVM and Stratis, apply quotas and document a snapshot-based recovery procedure.

Day 4: Systemd operations and service troubleshooting

• Systemd unit types, dependencies and target isolation
• Service control with systemctl enable, mask, restart and reload
• Journal analysis with journalctl filters and persistent logging
• Systemd timers as managed alternatives to cron jobs
• Process inspection using ps, top, pgrep, lsof and pstree
• Resource controls with systemd cgroups and unit limits
• Boot failure recovery using GRUB2 and emergency targets

Workshop: Diagnose a failed application service and a boot-time mount error, then produce validated recovery commands and rollback notes.

Day 5: Networking, name resolution and firewall controls

• NetworkManager connection profiles with nmcli
• IPv4 and IPv6 addressing, routes and DNS configuration
• Network bonding, teaming concepts and link resilience
• Hostname management and systemd-resolved name resolution
• Firewalld zones, services, ports and runtime-to-permanent changes
• Rich rules, masquerading and port forwarding with firewall-cmd
• Network diagnostics using ip, ss, ping, traceroute and dig

Workshop: Configure a resilient server network profile and implement segmented firewall rules for a web application service.

Day 6: SELinux and RHEL security administration

• SELinux modes, policy types and security contexts
• Context inspection with ls -Z, ps -Z and id -Z
• SELinux troubleshooting through ausearch, audit2why and sealert
• File-context management with semanage fcontext and restorecon
• SELinux booleans for controlled service behaviour
• PAM controls, password quality and account lockout policies
• Auditd rules and audit evidence for privileged activity

Workshop: Restore a blocked web service without disabling SELinux and create an auditable access-control remediation record.

Day 7: Performance, tuning and operational resilience

• CPU, memory and load analysis with top, vmstat, free and uptime
• Disk and I/O investigation with iostat, sar and pidstat
• Network performance analysis with ss, ethtool and nload
• System activity reporting through sysstat collection
• Kernel runtime parameters with sysctl and persistent tuning files
• Tuned profiles and workload-specific performance settings
• Log rotation, time synchronisation and capacity monitoring practices

Workshop: Investigate a simulated performance degradation, identify the constrained resource and submit a tuning and monitoring recommendation.

Day 8: Containers and application service deployment

• Podman architecture, rootless containers and OCI images
• Image discovery, inspection and registry authentication
• Container lifecycle management with podman commands
• Persistent storage through bind mounts and named volumes
• Container networking, ports and service exposure
• Container health checks, logs and troubleshooting methods
• Generating systemd units with podman generate systemd

Workshop: Deploy a rootless containerised service with persistent storage, firewall access and a systemd-managed startup unit.

Day 9: Automation and fleet administration

• Ansible inventories, variables and YAML playbook structure
• Ansible modules for packages, users, files, services and firewalld
• Idempotency, handlers, conditionals and error handling
• Secrets management with Ansible Vault
• RHEL system roles for standardised configuration
• Red Hat Satellite architecture, content views and lifecycle environments
• Patch orchestration, compliance reporting and remote execution concepts

Workshop: Create and test an Ansible playbook that applies a secure RHEL baseline and package update policy to multiple hosts.

Day 10: Integrated RHEL operations practicum

• Incident triage sequence for RHEL production failures
• Change planning, validation checkpoints and rollback criteria
• Backup verification and bare-metal recovery considerations
• Operational runbook structure and command evidence standards
• RHEL security hardening review against organisational controls
• Automation review, peer testing and playbook improvement
• RHEL administration application planning for workplace adoption

Workshop: Complete an integrated operations scenario and submit a RHEL runbook, Ansible baseline playbook and 90-day implementation plan.

Tools & standards covered

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, Red Hat Satellite, Ansible Automation Platform, Podman

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30	First session
10:30 – 10:45	Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30	Second session
12:30 – 13:30	Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00	Third session
15:00 – 15:15	Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30	Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions