LPIC-305 Objectives V3.0

Introduction

The description of the entire LPIC-3 programme is listed here.

Version Information

These objectives are A DRAFT FOR version 3.0.

There is also a summary and detailed information on the changes from version 2.0 to 3.0 of the objectives.

The version 2.0 objectives can be found here.

Translations of Objectives

The following translations of the objectives are available on this wiki:

• English
• Japanese

Objectives

Topic 341: Virtualization

341.1 Virtualization Concepts and Theory (weight: 6)

Weight	6
Description	Candidates should know and understand the general concepts, theory and terminology of Virtualization. This includes Xen, QEMU and libvirt terminology.

Key Knowledge Areas:

• Understand virtualization terminology
• Understand the pros and cons of Virtualization
• Understand the various variations of Hypervisors and Virtual Machine Monitors
• Understand the major aspects of migrating physical to virtual machines
• Understand the major aspects of migrating virtual machines between host systems
• Understand the features and implications of virtualization for a virtual machine, such as snapshotting, pausing, cloning and resource limits
• Awareness of oVirt, Proxmox and VirtualBox
• Awareness of Open vSwitch

The following is a partial list of the used files, terms and utilities:

• Hypervisor
• Hardware Virtual Machine (HVM)
• Paravirtualization (PV)
• Emulation and Simulation
• CPU flags
• /proc/cpuinfo
• Migration (P2V, V2V)

341.2 Xen (weight: 6)

Weight	6
Description	Candidates should be able to install, configure, maintain, migrate and troubleshoot Xen installations. The focus is on Xen version 4.x.

Key Knowledge Areas:

• Understand architecture of Xen, including networking and storage
• Understand the configuration of Xen nodes and domains
• Manage Xen nodes and domains
• Troubleshoot Xen installations
• Awareness of XAPI
• Awareness of XenStore
• Awareness of Xen Boot Parameters
• Awareness of the xm utility

The following is a partial list of the used files, terms and utilities:

• Domain0 (Dom0), DomainU (DomU)
• PV-DomU, HVM-DomU
• /etc/xen/
• xl
• xl.cfg
• xl.conf
• xentop

341.3 QEMU (weight: 6)

Weight	6
Description	Candidates should be able to install, configure, maintain, migrate and troubleshoot QEMU installations.

Key Knowledge Areas:

• Understand the architecture of QEMU, including KVM, networking and storage
• Understand QEMU configuration parameters
• Manage QEMU instances from the command line, including using the QEMU monitor
• Manage image files using qemu-img
• Install the QEMU Guest Agent and VirtIO device drivers
• Troubleshoot QEMU installations, including networking and storage

The following is a partial list of the used files, terms and utilities:

• Kernel modules: kvm, kvm-intel and kvm-amd
• /dev/kvm
• QEMU monitor
• qemu
• qemu-system-x86_64
• qemu-img
• ip
• brctl
• tunctl

341.4 Libvirt Virtual Machine Management (weight: 9)

Weight	9
Description	Candidates should be able to manage virtualization hosts and virtual machines (‘libvirt domains’) using libvirt and related tools.

Key Knowledge Areas:

• Understand the architecture of libvirt
• Manage libvirt connections and nodes
• Create and manage QEMU and Xen domains, including snapshots
• Manage and analyze resource consumption of domains
• Create and manage storage pools and volumes
• Create and manage virtual networks
• Migrate domains between nodes
• Understand how libvirt interacts with Xen and QEMU
• Understand how libvirt interacts with network services such as libvirtd and raadvd
• Understand libvirt XML configuration files
• Awareness of virtlogd and virtlockd

The following is a partial list of the used files, terms and utilities:

• libvirtd
• /etc/libvirt/
• virsh (including relevant subcommands)

Topic 342: Container Virtualization

342.1 Container Virtualization Concepts (weight: 6)

Weight	6
Description	Candidates should understand the concept of container virtualization. This includes understanding the Linux components used to implement container virtualization as well as using standard Linux tools to troubleshoot these components.

Key Knowledge Areas:

• Understand the concepts of system and application container
• Understand and analyze kernel namespaces
• Understand and analyze control groups
• Understand and analyze capabilities
• Understand the role of seccomp, SELinux and AppArmor for container virtualization
• Understand how LXC and Docker leverage namespaces, cgroups, capabilities, seccomp and MAC
• Awareness of other container virtualization approaches in Linux and other free operating systems, such as rkt, OpenVZ, systemd-nspawn or BSD Jails

The following is a partial list of the used files, terms and utilities:

• nsenter
• unshare
• ip (including relevant subcommands)
• capsh
• /sys/fs/cgroups
• /proc/[0-9]+/ns
• /proc/[0-9]+/status

342.2 LXC (weight: 6)

Weight	6
Description	Candidates should be able to use system containers using LXC and LXD. The version of LXC covered is 3.0 or higher.

Key Knowledge Areas:

• Understand the architecture of LXC and LXD
• Manage LXC containers based on existing images using LXD, including networking and storage
• Configure LXC container properties
• Limit LXC container resource usage
• Use LXD profiles
• Understand LXC images
• Awareness of traditional LXC tools

Partial list of the used files, terms and utilities:

• lxd
• lxc (including relevant subcommands)

342.3 Docker (weight: 9)

Weight	9
Description	Candidate should be able to manage Docker nodes and Docker containers. This include understand the architecture of Docker as well as understanding how Docker interacts with the node’s Linux system.

Key Knowledge Areas:

• Understand the architecture and components of Docker
• Manage Docker containers by using images from a Docker registry
• Understand and manage images and volumes for Docker containers
• Understand and manage logging for Docker containers
• Understand and manage networking for Docker
• Use Dockerfiles to create container images
• Run a Docker registry using the registry Docker image

Partial list of the used files, terms and utilities:

• dockerd
• /etc/docker/daemon.json
• /var/lib/docker/
• docker
• Dockerfile

342.4 Container Orchestration Platforms (weight: 2)

Weight	2
Description	Candidates should understand the importance of container orchestration and the key concepts Docker Swarm and Kubernetes provide to implement container orchestration.

Key Knowledge Areas:

• Understand the relevance of container orchestration
• Understand the key concepts of Docker Compose and Docker Swarm
• Understand the key concepts of Kubernetes and Helm
• Awareness of OpenShift, Rancher and Mesosphere DC/OS

Topic 343: VM Deployment and Provisioning

343.1 Cloud Management Tools (weight: 2)

Weight	2
Description	Candidates should understand common offerings in public clouds and have basic feature knowledge of commonly available cloud management tools.

Key Knowledge Areas:

• Understand common offerings in public clouds
• Basic feature knowledge of OpenStack
• Basic feature knowledge of Terraform
• Awareness of CloudStack, Eucalyptus and OpenNebula

Partial list of the used files, terms and utilities:

• IaaS, PaaS, SaaS
• OpenStack
• Terraform

343.2 Packer (weight: 2)

Weight	2
Description	Candidates should be able to use Packer to create system images. This includes running Packer in various public and private cloud environments as well as building container images for LXC/LXD.

Key Knowledge Areas:

• Understand the functionality and features of Packer
• Create and maintain template files
• Build images from template files using different builders

Partial list of the used files, terms and utilities:

• packer

343.3 cloud-init (weight: 3)

Weight

3

Description

Candidates should able to use cloud-init to configure virtual machines created from standardized images. This includes adjust virtual machines to match their available hardware resources, specifically, disk space and volumes. Additionally, candidates should be able to configure instances to allow secure SSH logins and install a specific set of software packages. Furthermore, candidates should be able to create new system images with cloud-init support.

Key Knowledge Areas:

• Understanding the features and concepts of cloud-init, including user-data, initializing and configuring cloud-init
• Use cloud-init to create, resize and mount file systems, configure user accounts, including login credentials such as SSH keys and install software packages from the distribution’s repository
• Integrate cloud-init into own system images
• Use config drive datasource for testing

Partial list of the used files, terms and utilities:

• cloud-init
• user-data
• /var/lib/cloud/

343.4 Vagrant (weight: 3)

Weight	3
Description	Candidate should be able to use Vagrant to manage virtual machines, including provisioning of the virtual machine.

Key Knowledge Areas:

• Understand Vagrant architecture and concepts, including storage and networking
• Retrieve and use boxes from Atlas
• Create and run Vagrantfiles
• Access Vagrant virtual machines
• Share and synchronize folder between a Vagrant virtual machine and the host system
• Understand Vagrant provisioning, i.e. File and Shell provisioners
• Understand multi-machine setup

Partial list of the used files, terms and utilities:

• vagrant
• Vagrantfile