Hi, I am planning to create a workstation to practice cloud tech. Will be spawning VMs, running K8s cluster, containers, etc. Planning to buy Macbook Air with M1 chip. But I am looking for answers if is Macbook a good option to practice cloud tech or not. Should I go for Macbook Air or build custom workstation by upgrading RAM, Core? Any tips?

If your workload is VM-heavy, then it is always better to have more cores, as that won't slow down your host system while you have multiple VMs running. M1 is an 8 core chip, and its VM support is still in early days. Not to mention that MacBook Air is fanless and will throttle under load. If you want macOS, then may be wait for a few months until MacBook Pro 16 refresh happens? Or else you can go for Ryzen 5000 series laptops (most of those are gaming ones are excellent for development too). Building custom PC is advisable but GPU availability is still a huge problem.

Hey thanks for the tips. This did clear a lot of things! Thanks a alot. Will reach out if needed

If Mac or laptop is not a requirement, you can go for a self-assembled PC and install this https://github.com/cloud-hypervisor/cloud-hypervisor