While I agree with your sentiment, as a competing theory if one really did want to teach cloud-native things then I'll point out that AWS is not the only cloud

While I agree with your sentiment, as a competing theory if one really did want to teach cloud-native things then I'll point out that AWS is not the only cloud API in town: https://docs.openstack.org/devstack/2025.1/ https://docs.openstack.org/devstack/2025.1/ -> https://opendev.org/openstack/devstack#start-a-dev-cloud https://opendev.org/openstack/devstack#start-a-dev-cloud My recollection is that it runs fairly well in a 8GB VM so it should positively scream on any one of the $25 32GB Dell or Thinkpad devices from Green Citizen (e.g. https://www.ebay.com/itm/316679014997 https://www.ebay.com/itm/316679014997 ) I haven't personally tried to set up a local network of them (to demonstrate how "AZ failure" works) but I can't imagine why it wouldn't work fine --- obligatory reference: I downloaded Slackware over 28.8k onto all 32(?) floppies. I was thrilled out of my mind about learning how this "unix" thing works that I heard so much about