Hardware

This book is intended for beginners and small-time users so hardware requirements are indeed an important factor of both the learning and implementation steps. There are many options to get you up and running, and to keep the experience as holistic as can be, I will write my opinions on the considerations for cost, deployment speed, and other important considerations in the context of the kind of audience the book is for.

For our purposes, the most important parts of computing hardware we'll need are Network Connection, Storage, RAM and CPU Cores. These components aren't created all the same, denoted by different generations. Obviously, newer and better almost always mean more expensive, and being a few generations behind in hardware won't impact us for our needs so I will be recommending either pre-loved or older parts for this guide. That being said, a good SSD for storage, more RAM and CPU cores could increase performance or allow us to deploy at a wider scale.

Your Personal Computer/Laptop

This is definitely an obvious choice for most of the users here, especially for the complete beginners; you already have it, you're probably using it to read this book and you don't need to spend any more on hardware. Depending on the power your computer is packing though, there may be reasons there could be better options.