Exam Vouchers: Linux Professional Institute LPIC-3 Exam 300 - Virtualization and Containerization (305-300)

The LPIC-3 certification is the culmination of the multi-level professional certification program of the Linux Professional Institute (LPI). LPIC-3 is designed for the enterprise-level Linux professional and represents the highest level of professional, distribution-neutral Linux certification within the industry. Four separate LPIC-3 specialty certifications are available. Passing any one of the four exams will grant the LPIC-3 certification for that specialty.

The LPIC-3 Virtualization and Containerization certification covers the administration of Linux systems enterprise-wide with an emphasis on virtualization and containerization.

Current version: 3.0

Updated June 2026

Requirements: Passing the 305 exam. The 90-minute exam is 60 multiple-choice and fill in the blank questions.

Validity period: 5 years.

Renewal:

Option 1 - Membership

When you join as a member, your certifications will remain active without writing additional exams. Your certification expiration date will be updated to the same expiration date as your membership.

Option 2 - Obtain a Higher Level of Certification

If a higher level LPIC certification is available, you can certify at the next level. Certifying at the next level will not only validate more of your skill set, it will also renew any lower-level LPIC certifications. For example, if you achieve an LPIC-2 certification, your LPIC-1 certification will be renewed to the same date as your LPIC-2.

Option 3 - Retake the Exams

Another way you can keep your certification active is to pass the current version of the exam(s) for the certification you currently hold.

This exam validates that the candidate can:

• Know and understand the general concepts, theory and terminology of virtualization
• Be able to install, configure, maintain, migrate and troubleshoot Xen installations
• Be able to manage and troubleshoot QEMU virtualization environments
• Be able to manage virtual machines using libvirt
• Be able to manage virtual machine disk images
• Understand container virtualization concepts and architecture
• Be able to use and manage LXC containers
• Be able to use and manage Docker containers
• Understand container orchestration platforms
• Be able to deploy virtual machines using cloud management tools
• Be able to create machine images using Packer
• Be able to configure systems using cloud-init
• Be able to manage environments using Vagrant

1- Full Virtualization

• Virtualization Concepts and Theory (weight: 6):
• 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, systemd-machined and VirtualBox
• Awareness of Open vSwitch
• Xen (weight: 3):
• Understand the architecture of Xen, including networking and storage
• Perform basic configuration of Xen nodes and domains
• Manage Xen nodes and domains
• Troubleshoot common issues in Xen installations
• Awareness of XAPI
• Awareness of XenStore
• QEMU (weight: 4):
• Understand the architecture of QEMU, including KVM, networking and storage
• Start QEMU instances from the command line
• Manage snapshots using the QEMU monitor
• Install the QEMU Guest Agent and VirtIO device drivers
• Troubleshoot QEMU installations, including networking and storage
• Libvirt Virtual Machine Management (weight: 9):
• 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 dnsmasq and radvd
• Virtual Machine Disk Image Management (weight: 3):
• Understand features of various virtual disk image formats
• Manage virtual machine disk images using qemu-img
• Mount partitions and access files contained in virtual machine disk images using libguest tools
• Convert and resize virtual machine images

2- Container Virtualization

• Container Virtualization Concepts (weight: 7):
• Understand container terminology
• Understand the differences between containers and virtual machines
• Understand kernel namespaces and control groups
• Understand security aspects of containers
• LXC (weight: 6):
• Install and configure LXC
• Manage LXC containers
• Configure container networking and storage
• Troubleshoot LXC containers
• Docker (weight: 9):
• Install and configure Docker
• Manage Docker containers and images
• Create and manage Dockerfiles
• Configure Docker networking and storage
• Manage Docker registries
• Container Orchestration Platforms (weight: 3):
• Understand container orchestration concepts
• Awareness of container orchestration tools

3- VM Deployment and Provisioning

• Cloud Management Tools (weight: 2):
• Understand cloud management tools
• Deploy virtual machines using cloud platforms
• Packer (weight: 2):
• Create machine images using Packer
• Automate image building processes
• Cloud-init (weight: 3):
• Configure cloud-init
• Automate system initialization tasks
• Vagrant (weight: 3):
• Create and manage environments using Vagrant
• Configure Vagrantfiles
• Provision development environments

The candidate must have an active LPIC-2 certification to receive the LPIC-3 certification.