I hear the word server in all sorts of contexts whenever computers are involved. What is a server and how does it relate to a PC?
In: Technology
A Server is a PC, any PC can be used as a Server. It runs specific software for all kinds of things. Like a Web-Server. It runs all day and night and does the thing that the software is telling it todo, like showing you a website when you visit a site, handle the users/products/maintaince of a webshop and so on.
Most of the time, you don’t sit in front of a server, its sits in a data center with hundres/thousand other PCs, but you could turn your own PC into one.
A server serves something or better provides a service to you, a client.
Both client and server are just computers with specific software.
A webserver serves websites to browsers.
A file server provides access to files over the internet(or any network), thats what google drive and so on do.
And then there is many more kinds of servers like database servers or timeservers.
A server is a computer that is built for other computers to connect to, generally to receive messages from them, and send out the information those messages requested.
A server can be a small one that serves a small number of computers, of a really powerful fast one that serves thousands.
A server is most generically an independent storage machine you can make request for information from and can handle many requests at once
Information is where things can get complicated. The information can be as simple as 50 word documents a team of 2 people need access to…..or it can be an entire video game taking input from 200 players in real time
It’s a computer that serves. So if you need something served, you go find a server. Need a webpage? Go find a webserver. Need to send an email? Go find a mailserver (it serves you the Mailservice). Need a file? Go find a fileserver. Most of the times your computer does the finding for you.
Think of it as like being in a restaurant. You are the client. You want some food (data). You give an order to the server. The server relays that to the kitchen (data storage). Then when the food (data) you ordered is ready, the server brings it to you.
Any PC can essentially act as a server. It’s more a word to describe the relationship one PC can have to another in a particular network architecture/layout of information exchange.
Basically, the idea is that you have *servers* and *clients*. Servers are essentially PCs that act as holders of information or records. Clients are PCs trying to access or change information stored on servers. Servers are fairly static and relatively few in number (generally), while clients can come/go, pop in and out of existence, be numerous or zero in number, etc.
So say you store 100,000 images for a website, or webpage, on a particular PC. When people try to load information for that website, whether it’s a single user or 1000+ individual users, they’re all sending requests to that one PC holding the information: “send me this picture”, “send me this web page”, “make this change in your database”.
To quote [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_(computing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_(computing))
>A server is a computer that provides information to other computers called “clients” on computer network.[1] This architecture is called the client–server model.
The computer you read Reddit on is a client, cellphones etc are just a type of mobile computer. Reddit has a computer that stores all the website content. Your client provides the content and the server provides it.
It is a difference in the tasks the computer does not how the computer works. Lost of small devices works as servers too, if you log into the configuration interface of a router you have at home the router works as a web server. You could use the same computer as a server and as a client. You could even do that at the same time.
A typical computer used as a server for a website will be a bit different to your computer at home because the components are chosen for that task. So they often have more ram, CPUs with a lots of cores, the can have large and fast storage systems too. That makes it possible to provide information to many clients. A computer you have at home might have a powerful GPU so you can play games with advanced graphics on it. A computer you use in an office likely has less advanced graphics because they are used for different stuff.
So a server is a computer that is used to provide information to other computers, clients. The also typically have components that make them great at that task.
Some very good answers here. I will add that servers also provide redundancy for the data. Most will have multiple hard drives that are in a RAID configuration (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) and multiple power supplies, so they can always stay available in case one piece of hardware fails. Client computers typically have one drive and one power supply.
It’s best to think of it in terms of roles, than a device. When we have networked computing and the internet, two or more devices are talking together.
A “server” is more of a generic term for the thing in the conversation that is holding and returning the information the client device is asking for.
A server could be a PC in your closet, a NAS device, a containerized app running the cloud, a virtual machine somewhere etc.
It can be as simple as one server, or with something like Reddit there are many servers of many types, handling databases, image storage videos, application code etc.
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