Reddit reviews RHCSA/RHCE Red Hat Linux Certification Practice Exams with Virtual Machines, Second Edition (Exams EX200 & EX300)

All credit to /u/ArchivisX as this is a copy paste from a saved thread:

Get into IT. The quickest route is probably to self-study yourself into an RHCE. Less than $100 in books, $400 in certs, and 2-3 months of your time and you could pick up an RHCE. If you're not making $60k on that alone, you'll pick up $40k with ease and be making $60k at your next job within 1-2 years. You'll be making $80-100k with 3-5 years experience depending on where you live/move.

If you look on Amazon, you'll find Michael Jang writes some of the best material out there, able to get you from zero to passing the exam, with labs and all.
http://www.amazon.com/Certification-Practice-Virtual-Machines-Second/dp/007184208X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1435195588&sr=1-4&keywords=michael+jang+rhce
This is an example of one of his books. The last one I picked up was for the RHCE on RHEL 6. Red Hat only allows people to certify on 7 now. I would look for Michael Jang's books on RHEL 7 for the RHCE/RHCSA tests (RHCE is greater than RHCSA).
His books generally include a disc that has lab materials on them. The lab materials can be done within CentOS (about 99% identical to Red Hat and when doing the labs). CentOS is free. You can load it as a lightweight VM in Oracle Virtualbox (also free). So aside from the book, the OS, the VM, etc., is all free. Legit free, not pirated free.
Once you're ready to certify, you can go to Red Hat's website and local for a testing center. It cost me $400 + travel (90 minutes to the closest center for me) to get my cert. But why RHCE? Why not some other route? Because Linux Admins are in demand. I have no degree. I've never been to college. All I have are some certs and some experience and I get probed by recruiters daily by e-mail (non-spam, individual), and weekly by phone call. I haven't had a soft offer of less than $80k in over a year. By soft offer, I mean, a ball-park figure of salary being discussed at the first point of contact. I can usually negotiate $90-100k out of most places.
I'm willing to personally walk someone through getting started if a person is willing to go through the steps to learn, order themselves one of the books I listed and begin the process of going through the material. It is dry. It is boring. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but if you can understand everything in his book(s) to pass the RHCE, I know you're capable of doing 90% of what it takes to be a Linux Admin.
The exam consists of you sitting in an actual lab, with a camera watching over you. You're given a set of tasks to complete. There are no questions. You have no idea if you're right or wrong. When you finish the exam, you're given a score which may as well be as good as pass or fail, because it doesn't tell you where or how you fucked up, but if you follow that book, you'll be able to pass.

Good Luck OP

I believe they removed the Linus System Administration Essentials course. The Linux Foundation Edx page only show these two courses.

I think the industry standard is still RHCSA/RHCSE which might be cheaper than the Linux Foundation Course. Going for RHCSA is $400 USD for the exam, and you can probably attain the training material for about 60-70 USD.

I think going for RHCSA would better suit anyone who might want to pursue a career in Linux Admin work because the name would get picked up by HR filters or listings. Whereas the LS cert is still new and not really recognized by many companies.

This book, and the practice companion is about $30 USD each.

Or has there been a shift where Linux Foundation certs aremore valued over RedHat certs?

It's available to order as a prerelease

There are other RHEL 7 guides and practice exam books out there too.