In early 2008, Sun updated their Solaris 10 System Administration Certification Exams. This affects the following exams: CX-310-200, CX-310-202 and CX-310-203. They added and removed exam objectives. 

The updates affect approximately 5-10% of what I have in my Solaris 10 Exam Prep book. I’m currently updating my book, but it’s a lengthy process and will take a few months to get published. I plan to publish the new chapters here as soon as they are typeset- probably in a few weeks.  In the meantime, I’ve made some notes and I’m providing some useful links to the materials you’ll need to read to supplement the material in my book.

The Solaris 10 Exam Prep book is still your best resource. Supplement the book with materials on a few new topics and you’ll be ready for the exams. The practice exams available at UnixEd.com are up to date and ready - they already reflect the current exams.

Also, visit the forum at www.UnixEd.com/forum . You’ll find lots of discussion there about the updated exams.

Below, I’ve outlined the changes to expect on the SCSA exams. I’ve created hyperlinks to the materials that do a pretty good job of covering the topics. In a few weeks, I’ll have the materials in a concise format for the 2nd edition of the Exam Prep book. I’ll make them available on this website as soon as they are ready.

Changes to CX-310-200

In addition to what I already cover in chapters 1-7, know the following:

• Installation and Secure by Default / Limited and Open networking profile

Sun added several questions pertaining to the x86/x64 platform. Specifically know the following:

• Perform an OS installation from CD / DVD for SPARC, x64, and x86- based systems.
• Understand device naming conventions for Solaris on the x86 platform
• Understand fdisk
• Additional info on partitions on the x86 platform
• Repairing important boot files on the x86/x64 system
• Additional info on the bootloader, boot archive, etc.
• Know the phases of the boot process on the x86 platform
• Understand GRUB on the x86 platform
    More info on GRUB
     and yet even more on GRUB......

OpenSolaris.org and BigAdmin also have some excellent information on the x86 platform.

Changes to CX-310-202

In addition to what I already cover in chapters 8-14, know the following:

• Understand how to mirror the OS on the x86 platform and how to configure the x86 system for a mirrored failover.
• ZFS File Systems:
  - Know how to create pools and ZFS file systems.
  - How to modify ZFS file system properties
  - Mount/unmount ZFS file systems
  - Destroy ZFS pools and file systems
  - Know how to use ZFS snapshots and zones.
  - Know how to use ZFS with zones.
• Understand how to configure a WAN Boot installation and how to perform a Live Upgrade.
• More info on WAN Boot

Changes to CX-310-203

• All of the “Advanced installation” topics are still in this exam including JumpStart. Also included are questions on WAN boot, Live Upgrade, and Zones.
• Also in this exam you’ll find questions on ZFS. See my notes above for exam CX-310-202 for links to the information on all of these topics.
• If you’re taking the upgrade exam, make sure that you are familiar with all of the new stuff in exam CX-310-200 (see my notes on the CX-310-200 exam above).