Solid XK0-005 book?

[Tess Sluijter]

Good day everyone!

I'm anxiously looking for a solid, good book to prepare my students for XK0-005.

The previous three years, I taught XK0-004 using my own curriculum and adding to it with Bresnahan and Blum's book from Sybex / Wiley.

We've pre-ordered the 005 version of the same book, but I also bought the ebook version. The print version isn't out yet and I need something to prep my classes with, right?

Well, reading through the B&H 005 book from Sybex, I'm really not impressed. The 004 version was halfway decent, but the 005 version seems like a lazy update.

* The book left in a few topics which were removed from 004 -> 005.
* The book does not go deep enough by far into topics like Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, Terraform et al. Ditto for PKI and so on.

I've already taken and passed the 005 exam and I know how thoroughly some of those topics were covered. The book does not do it justice at all. For example, the only two mentions of "podman" are literally from output of the "docker" command, aliased as "podman".

So. Bottom line: who can recommend me a better book for XK0-005? Preferably one that'll come out soon, so we can cancel this pre-order and switch in time.

 

[Tess Sluijter]

I've gone over the table of contents for the 005 Sybex book and they literally just lift-and-shifted all the contents from 004 into 005. I will need to do some searches and checks to see if anything of the new objectives made it into the book.

There's of course the slight chance that a lot of the modern stuff that I saw on the beta exam, got dropped when 005 went live. But I really don't hope that's true. Lemme go check the latest version of the objectives docu.

 

[jasoneckert]

Mine (6th edition) will be epic. But I imagine Cengage won't release it until early 2023.

 

[Tess Sluijter]

Knowing your previous work, it will be awesome. I just hope you will actually show plenty of practical examples of IaC configs, of container management with all tools and so on.

I'm in the lucky position that my own curriculum already covered a lot of the new topics, because I thought they'd be important to the students. I have a couple of days' work, to expand a bit on what I have and then we're good to go.

 

[Tess Sluijter]

Other books in the pipeline, coming soon:

• Exam cram book, by Rothwell, from Pearson. Out in October 2022. $50
• Cert guide, by Brunson, from Pearson. Out in April 2023. $60
• Cert guide, by our @jasoneckert, from Cengage. Out in early 2023. $90
• Of course, I'm also forgetting CompTIA's own, official study guide. Available right now. $140

Having browsed through CompTIA's materials for Net+ and A+ in recent years, I'll forego the official books. I personally feel they are much too expensive and I really don't like the way these books are written/layout. though I'll admit that I like the Linux+ student guide a lot better than the Net+ and A+ books I saw before.

Jason's book is also quite a bit more expensive than Sybex ($60) and the others, but the Cengage books is full color and has great printing. Plus the contents are awesome.

EDIT:

Hilariously (or is it just gruesome?), the official page for Rothwell's book doesn't bode well either. The summary / intro text refers to IBM Cognos (so it's like a lorem ipsum) and the sample table of contents is quite literally the XK0-005 objectives.

EDIT 2:

Okay, I'm getting confused a bit.

Obviously I cannot tell you what I saw (NDAs and all), but when I took the beta exam it had a lot of technical in-depth questions about topics like Terraform, Ansible, Docker/Podman and more. I was surprised to see none of that in the new Sybex book.

But now that I'm reading through CompTIA's official books, I see none of that is in there either!

@Liz Wannemacher what am I to make of this? The exam I took does not coincide with the materials taught in the official guide. Does that mean that XK0-005 decided to drop all the technical in-depth CI/CD and orchestration questions that were in the beta?

 

[Samuel Graeff]

Obviously I cannot tell you what I saw (NDAs and all), but when I took the beta exam it had a lot of technical in-depth questions about topics like Terraform, Ansible, Docker/Podman and more. I was surprised to see none of that in the new Sybex book.

But now that I'm reading through CompTIA's official books, I see none of that is in there either!

@Liz Wannemacher what am I to make of this? The exam I took does not coincide with the materials taught in the official guide. Does that mean that XK0-005 decided to drop all the technical in-depth CI/CD and orchestration questions that were in the beta?

@Tess Sluijter, that's an interesting question. I didn't take the latest exam yet, but analyzing the exam objectives, it seems that for the infrastructure as code technologies, as well as, cloud, and orchestration concepts, we should know just the basics... and not diving deeper into any of those technologies.

3.2 Given a scenario, perform basic container operations.
3.3 Given a scenario, perform basic version control using Git.
3.4 Summarize common infrastructure as code technologies.
3.5 Summarize container, cloud, and orchestration concepts.

Could you, please, describe here some example questions considering the "in-depth CI/CD and orchestration" you've mentioned you had in the exam?

 

[Jarrel]

Not a book, but it's a very handy online resource, from the Linux Foundation:

Linuxシステム管理入門 (LFS201-JP) - Linux Foundation - Training

Learn the skills and processes to administer, configure and upgrade Linux systems, and efficiently manage a production Linux infrastructure.

training.linuxfoundation.org

 

[Tess Sluijter]

Could you, please, describe here some example questions considering the "in-depth CI/CD and orchestration" you've mentioned you had in the exam?

I'm trying not to break any NDAs here.

The long and short of it is that, on my exam, I got a large number of questions asking specific commands for podman, plus more than a handful with detailed configuration examples of Ansible, Puppet and Kubernetes, asking me to identify the purpose / activity.

Reading what you quoted from the objectives and browsing through the books, it feels like CompTIA's back-paddling back-pedaling. It felt like a ballsy, exciting move to bring XK0-005 into the 2020s! But with the stuff taken out, it just feels like XK0-004 without the legacy stuff.

 

[Samuel Graeff]

I'm trying not to break any NDAs here.

The long and short of it is that, on my exam, I got a large number of questions asking specific commands for podman, plus more than a handful with detailed configuration examples of Ansible, Puppet and Kubernetes, asking me to identify the purpose / activity.

I think discussing this subject here among the instructors, and just putting the highlights as you did (which was the idea), it does not break any NDA. Thanks for your response.

The specific podman commands you pointed out, I think it is ok as we have in the objectives (3.2 Given a scenario, perform basic container operations). Moreover, all the main tools/technologies used to manage containers follow the OCI (alias podman=docker).

For the "detailed configuration examples of Ansible, Puppet and Kubernetes, asking me to identify the purpose / activity", I think it is a big concern as we do not have it in the official material. What we have is just the highlights and the main differences between them.

In my view point, covering specific subjects like Ansible, Puppet or even Kubernetes should be related to more advanced course or training, like a DevOps one. Let's take Red Hat certification as an example: Red hat covers the Ansible subject just for the advanced RHCE. For RHCSA, which in my view point, it is very similar to what we have for Linux+, they cover the essential with some pluses.

I do not have access to the CertMaster Lab content, however, there is a specific content available at that platform, related to configuring a system using Ansible, as you can see at page 15 of the attached file. This configuration, is not covered on the official material.

 

[Tess Sluijter]

I think discussing this subject here among the instructors, and just putting the highlights as you did (which was the idea), it does not break any NDA. Thanks for your response.

Mind you, we might be among instructors but as far as I know this board is 100% open and readable to the whole Internet.

The specific podman commands you pointed out, I think it is ok as we have in the objectives (3.2 Given a scenario, perform basic container operations). Moreover, all the main tools/technologies used to manage containers follow the OCI (alias podman=docker).

Yeah, my biggest beef with all the books is that they might allude to the OCI and aliasing, but they don't make it explicit. This makes it easy for students to overlook it and only learn Docker. Then on the test they'll go "what? I never learned the syntax for Podman!"

For the "detailed configuration examples of Ansible, Puppet and Kubernetes, asking me to identify the purpose / activity", I think it is a big concern as we do not have it in the official material. What we have is just the highlights and the main differences between them.

That's also where my concern lies. The beta had this stuff, but none of the books do. And it was one of the key things that made me go "wow, this exam has been beefed up!". Without it, we're going back to XK0-004 but without the legacy stuff.

In my view point, covering specific subjects like Ansible, Puppet or even Kubernetes should be related to more advanced course or training, like a DevOps one.

I don't disagree with you there. Fully knowing any of those tools is a cert by and of itself. But understanding / being capable of reading a config thanks to examples? That would fall into L+, I feel. But that's why I poked Liz: to ask what CompTIA's official standpoint is.

 

[Samuel Graeff]

Mind you, we might be among instructors but as far as I know this board is 100% open and readable to the whole Internet.

Sorry, I didn't know that! I thought it was a closed one.

 

[Rodney Maseko]

Mine (6th edition) will be epic. But I imagine Cengage won't release it until early 2023.

i would love to see that how can i have access to your 5th edition???

 

[Rodney Maseko]

I have loved these arguments its some heads up

 

[jasoneckert]

i would love to see that how can i have access to your 5th edition???

Just talk to your Cengage rep and they'll get you access to the book & MindTap

 

[Tess Sluijter]

Just talk to your Cengage rep

Or buy it through your favorite online book retailer, like I did.

 

[Fanuel]

I just like the debate here!