The developer version, yes. But I have not seen the AWS amis for the developer version: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2021/10/amazon-ec...

You can't install the enterprise non-prod for free. (But the developer version is supposed to have all the features)

It's pretty easy to create your own amis with developer versions. It makes sense why AWS doesn't necessarily provide this out of the box. But it still stands for fully managed versions of licensed software, you'll pay for the license even if it's non-prod

Yes, that's not to say it is not possible to create a similar env, but I thought the debate was how precisely you are replicating your production env.

Sure it may be "good enough", but I thought the debate was about precision. How your own ami setup may differ from the AWS built from the developer version compared to the AWS ami? I don't know.

Trying for an identical setup in staging is expensive, this is just a scenario I am familiar with. I am sure there are a lot like this.

I was thinking about this line from the article:

> More often than not, each environment uses different hardware, configurations, and software versions.

They can't even deploy the same software versions to their staging environment. We're a long way off talking about precisely replicating load characteristics