Questions Acumatica Test Environment

Hi

I am totally new to Acumatica. Hence bear with me if I sound like a total newbie (which I am).

A little bit of background about me first: I have been doing ERP systems implementations for over 20 years downunder mostly in the logistics/warehousing/wholesaling/light manufacturing sectors with all sorts of packages including NetSuite/JDE/GP/Navision before the last 2 were bought out by MS. I have done a lot of customisations as most businesses couldn't use any ERP system out of the box. Unfortunately, my ex left me and she's got the cars/houses/kids and I am left with nothing. Due to nasty separation process (and the stink she kicked up at my old work place), I was forced to resign and signed a non-compete agreement. Hence, I am looking for totally new ERP packages as I am unable to do any work on the systems I know (which I believe is rather unfair) and I couldn't solicit work from any of my old clients (which I agree with).

I come across Acumatica while doing some work for a new client. They were running export from the Acumatica query screen (to Excel) and complained about the fact that they had to reformat the output each and every time. I was able to use OData integration to feed multiple datasets into Microsoft Power BI, and relink various records in Power BI data model. I was then able to create the report this client needed and all they needed to do is to refresh the Power Query (which is parameterised to cell values in Excel) and they have the report they needed without having to run export and reformat.

I originally believed it was a one off project and didn't think too much of it. However, this client is now asking if I could support them (because their existing VAR couldn't do what I did after 5 years) and I decided to take a good look at Acumatica. It fits my requirement that it being a package that I have not previously worked with and with it being cloud based, it is definitely the trend nowadays.

I know where to download the installation packages. I am in a bit of a bind as my windows 10 machine already is running other services on http/https ports. I could configure IIS to run on different ports. However, from my cursory look at the documentation, Acumatica seems to have a problem with non standard ports. I am also a bit short on time and hence I am wondering if there are any test drives of Acumatica that is available. I know try.acumatica has been defunct for a few years and AWS test drive doesn't seem to have Acumatica either. I suppose I could use the free Azure environment to set up SQL Server/IIS and I haven't really looked into it. In any case, if that could work, it probably take quite some time for me to set up Acumatica test environment. Hence i am asking if there is a better solution in terms of setting up a new test/sandbox environment short of buying another PC to run Acumatica. In addition, this client is running Acumatica on AWS and I presume that means direct access to the underlying database is out of the question. Pulling data out would need to use OData interface as a starting point (short of building custom forms).

Any pointers? Thanks in advance.