Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA)
The RHCSA is a practical examination. Live systems are put in front of you with a list of tasks, and the result depends entirely on whether the systems do what was asked when the time ends.
No multiple choice, and no way to recognise an answer.
Exam facts
- Exam code
- EX200
- Level
- Associate
- Field
- Linux & open source
- Access
- Paid
- Assessment
- Proctored exam
- Questions
- performance-based tasks on live RHEL 10 systems: no multiple choice; the task count is not published
- Passing score
- not published on the exam page; Red Hat emails a result within three US business days
- Languages
- EnglishThe exam environment and tasks are in English worldwide; Red Hat's page does not list other exam languages.
- Price
- see vendor
- Validity
- 3 years, renewable
- Exam delivery
- Performance-based exams on live systems: in Red Hat testing centres, at training partners, as an individual exam session or remote; booked on redhat.com after choosing a location
Prerequisites: None enforced. Red Hat recommends the RH124 and RH134 courses (or the RH199 rapid track) or equivalent administration experience.
Renewal: Pass EX200 again, pass the RHCE exam EX294 while the RHCSA is current, or pass any exam an RHCE can apply towards RHCA; Red Hat calls a lapsed certificate 'non-current', not expired
Source: exam page at Red Hat · Price: Red Hat shows the price only after you select a region in the purchase flow; training partners quote the standalone exam at roughly 500 USD, bundles with the RH124/RH134 courses far above that
How to prepare
1. The vendor's free learning path
Red Hat publishes the exam objectives and a learning path free of charge: the authoritative source for scope and weighting. Open the learning path (opens in a new tab)
2. Online courses
Courses and practice tests that target this exam; details, price and the provider link (affiliate) are on each course page.
Book the exam
Delivered by Performance-based exams on live systems: in Red Hat testing centres, at training partners, as an individual exam session or remote; booked on redhat.com after choosing a location. Schedule with Red Hat (opens in a new tab)
Affiliate disclosure: the course link above is an affiliate link; a purchase through it may earn Getting Digital a commission at no extra cost to the buyer. The vendor's learning path and booking links carry no commission.
Few vendors disclose less about an exam than Red Hat does about this one. The public page states neither how long you have nor what score passes, and the price appears only once you have selected a region inside the purchase flow; figures quoted elsewhere are third parties' guesses. What the vendor does state is the format, the product version the exam is based on, the recommended courses, and that results arrive by email within a few working days.
| Aspect | RHCSA | Knowledge-tested Linux exams |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Tasks on live systems | Questions about systems |
| Guessing | Impossible | Always partly possible |
| What it proves | You did it | You could describe it |
| Preparation | Time at a terminal | Reading plus some practice |
| Distribution | Red Hat family | Neutral |
That format is why the certificate carries the weight it does among people who hire Linux administrators. It is also why preparation advice is unusually simple: build systems, break them, fix them under time pressure, and do it until the common tasks are muscle memory rather than recall. Reading about permissions, storage and services teaches you to recognise them; the exam asks you to configure them while the clock runs.
What Red Hat does put in writing
- Performance-based, on live systems running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, with no multiple choice anywhere.
- Recommended preparation: the RH124 and RH134 system administration courses, or the RH199 rapid track, or equivalent experience. None is required.
- Current for three years, and Red Hat's word for a lapsed certificate is non-current, not expired, which is a distinction with a practical consequence below.
- Remote or in a testing centre, with the exam environment and tasks in English worldwide.
- Results by email within three US business days. There is no on-screen pass at the end of the sitting.
Renewal by climbing
Three routes keep it current: sit EX200 again, pass the engineer exam EX294 while this certificate is still current, or pass any exam that an engineer can apply towards the architect level. Administrators who intend to stay on Red Hat rarely resit this one, because the next exam up renews it in passing, and that shapes the sensible plan: sit this, work for a year or two, and let the engineer exam do the renewing. The non-current wording matters here. A lapsed certificate is not deleted from your record; it stops counting as current, and the engineer route requires a current one underneath it.
Reboot before you finish
The commonest way to fail a performance exam is to do the work and never make it persistent. A service enabled in the running system and not at boot, a mount that exists until the next restart, a firewall rule that vanished with the session: each looks complete at the terminal and is marked as missing once the grader's system restarts. Reboot your practice machine at the end of every task list and check what survived, and do the same in the exam if time allows.
On cost, Red Hat shows its price only after a region is chosen in the purchase flow, training partners quote a standalone figure, and the course bundles sit far above it. Whether the courses are worth buying depends on who you are. An experienced administrator on another distribution needs a lab, a task list and repetition; a career changer may find the structure of RH124 and RH134 worth the money precisely because there is no multiple choice to fall back on when the terminal goes quiet.
What a question looks like
An original question in the exam's style, not one from any question bank.
On the provided system, configure persistent storage meeting a stated size and mount point, ensure a named service starts automatically and survives reboot, and grant a specified group access without widening permissions for anyone else.
Nothing is ambiguous and everything is verifiable, which is the difficulty. Each clause is ordinary work and the combination has to survive a reboot, which catches candidates who configured the running system and never made the change permanent. The grader does not care how you did it, only that the system behaves as specified afterwards.
What it costs to get and to keep
| Item | Amount | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Exam fee | not published | not published on the public exam page; Red Hat shows a figure only after you select a region inside the purchase flow, so no list price exists to quote (as of 12 September 2026) |
| Recommended preparation courses | not published | Red Hat names its own system administration courses as the recommended route. They are a substantial cost in their own right and are not required to sit the exam (as of 12 September 2026) |
| Renewal every three years | not published | sit EX200 again, pass the engineer-level exam while this is current, or pass an exam counting toward the architect programme (as of 12 September 2026) |
How much preparation, from where you are
- You administer Linux servers daily
- Closer than you think, with one caveat: the exam is on the Red Hat family specifically, and candidates from other distributions lose time on package management and service tooling differences rather than on concepts.
- You use Linux confidently as a desktop
- A real gap. Storage, service management and permissions at administrator depth are different work from daily use, and the time limit punishes anybody who has to think about syntax.
- You hold a knowledge-tested Linux certificate
- You know what to do and possibly not how to do it quickly. Convert the reading into repetition on live systems; that conversion is the whole of the preparation.
What passing this does not prove
- Whether you would have designed the system that way.
- Anything about scale, automation or configuration management.
- Judgement under competing priorities, since the tasks are given rather than chosen.
- Distributions outside the Red Hat family, which is the trade you accept here.
Against the alternatives
- LPIC-1: Linux Administrator (101-500 + 102-500)
- Knowledge-tested, vendor-neutral, two exams, and five years of validity. Easier to prepare for by reading and a weaker signal of hands-on competence.
- CompTIA Linux+ (XK0-006)
- One exam, English only, and inside CompTIA's renewal chain. Choose it if you are already holding CompTIA certificates you want renewed; choose this if an employer runs Red Hat.
- Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) (CKA)
- The site's other live-task exam, pointed at Kubernetes rather than the operating system. A natural companion, and this is the foundation underneath it.
EX200: quick answers
Why is there no price or passing score?
Because Red Hat does not publish them. The exam page gives neither a duration nor a score, and the price appears only after selecting a region inside the purchase flow. A figure from a third party would be a guess, so the field stays empty.
Are the official courses required?
No. Red Hat recommends its system administration courses and nothing prevents you sitting the exam without them. They are expensive, and for an experienced administrator the cheaper preparation is a lab and repetition. For a career changer the structure may well be worth the money.
How should I practise?
On live systems, repeatedly, under a timer. Build a virtual machine, complete a realistic task list, reboot it, and check that everything you configured survived. The commonest failure is a candidate who did the work and never made it persistent.
Does it transfer to other distributions?
The skills do, substantially. The specifics of package management, service tooling and security defaults are Red Hat's, and an administrator moving to a different family will be productive quickly but not immediately. That is the ordinary trade in any vendor certificate.
What does non-current mean, as opposed to expired?
Red Hat keeps the certificate on your record and stops treating it as current after three years. The practical effect is the same for an employer reading a CV, and different for the ladder: the engineer exam renews this one only while it is current, so a lapsed administrator certificate has to be resat before the engineer route reopens.
Where this exam sits in the field
What comes next
Concepts this exam draws on
Glossary entries with the reason each one matters for EX200.
- Containers
Podman containers as systemd services are RHCSA objectives.
- Web Server
Configuring and securing services on RHEL.
- VPS
A live RHEL system is the exam; a VPS is the practice ground.
- Firewall
Configuring the host firewall is a live task on the exam.
- IP Addressing
Configuring network interfaces with static addresses is an exam objective.
Last reviewed 3 October 2026 · Getting Digital