I recently passed the LPIC-3 305 Virtualisation and Containerisation exam, which made me think again about the value of renewing certifications.
To Renew or Not to Renew
For someone already working in IT and using the relevant technology daily, recertification is usually more about credential maintenance than learning. The learning curve happened the first time, when I was studying the objectives, homelabbing, passing the exam and then applying that knowledge in real work. In terms of professional development, the return is likely to be weak if the technology is already part of your daily work.
A three-year certification expiry period, or worse, a two-year period such as with CKA, makes renewal even harder to justify. For me, it creates a recurring cycle of revision, booking and paying for exams, and sometimes even travelling to a test centre. At that point, the question is whether the same time and money would be better spent learning something new.
LPIC-1 was my first certification exam. I still have fond memories of studying for it and discovering tools and commands I did not even know existed, such as alien, chattr and fg. It took me three years of continuous learning to go from LPIC-1 to LPIC-2, and then to LPIC-3 in 2016. That track paved the way for what came later in my career, including RHCA.
That personal connection is one of the reasons I passed LPIC-3 305. It is valid for five years, renews LPIC-2 and LPIC-1, and Linux is still my bread and butter.
Exam Experience
LPIC-3 305 is the 90-minute exam with 60 multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions.
Although the exam is available remotely, I opted for an on-site exam at my local test centre after a previous stressful online exam experience. I travelled to the centre, sat the exam, and was done with it. Stress free.
Exam Preparation
I used my homelab to work through the exam objectives:
- QEMU/KVM/libvirt for full virtualisation.
- Kubernetes/Docker for container virtualisation.
- Terraform/Packer for VM deployment and provisioning.
Also, AWS EC2 cloud-init for provisioning in the cloud.