Yeah I don't think it's an awful tool for experimenting or education. But I regularly see people expecting a Raspberry Pi fleet to be an actual server cluster,

Yeah I don't think it's an awful tool for experimenting or education. But I regularly see people expecting a Raspberry Pi fleet to be an actual server cluster, and you're just creating a bad time for yourself there. I use a combination of Intel NUCs, Gigabyte Brix, and flashed Datto Altos (branded Zotac Z-Boxes) for various roles and they absolutely shine whether running Linux or Windows-based workloads.