Lot of sales for 4th of july (and ongoing ones) where you can pay $10-$14 for a YEAR of a small cheap VPS. Usually only has 1GB of memory, but that’s plenty to play around with and learn. If nothing else, a good cheap ipv4 you can use for some port forwarding. There are lots of options, but I’ve used racknerd and ethernetservers which have been fine.
I have my own server at home, but I bought two small ones to start learning Ansible with in a risk free way. Eventually plan to redo my main server with a complete Ansible setup, really want to hop on that “infrastructure as code” train.
ABSOLUTELY THIS. Same. I have to deal with Oracle and their Opera PMS platform which uses Weblogic, 19c, and a variety of other products and it makes me actively want to scream and light things on fire. If I can help it, you won’t catch me using another Oracle product if I can avoid it.