I would prefer to stay away from CentOS Stream for the virtualization
platform. The RHEL product itself would be a perfect solution, but
it's rather costly if just using it for a virtualization host OS, and
there are surprisingly no education discounts.
I don't know all the details, but it would worth to check the possibility to
get RHEL for free for your organization, see
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/extending-no-cost-red-hat-enterprise-linux...
There is also some program for universities, but no idea, how much you can
safe with it or if it worth in your case
https://www.redhat.com/en/resources/rhel-site-subscription-academics-broc...