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
Trying for an ELI5 answer.
On the internet, your home PC is private. You don’t share it with other people. On the internet, there are computers that are in public space, where everybody comes together to share information. For example, eBay is a public place to come together and trade.
A server is the computer that hosts the public web pages. It’s called a server because of its role in SERVING information to everyone.
Likewise, many companies have private servers for just their companies, where the employees share information. So it’s a public area that is private to the company. it’s not open to the general public.
Web pages are hosted on servers. Cloud disk drives are hosted on servers. Shipping websites are hosted on servers.
You can imagine that servers need to operate at scale to answer thousands of requests per second. So these computers can be really big. And you may need many of them working together. So Server computer hardware is different than home PC, they are usually built into a big refrigerator sized cabinet. This hardware would also be called “a server.”
EDIT. in principle, the computer is of the same kind of computers as a PC. Such as they both use AMD or Intel processors. It’s the same hardware ecosystem. But server hardware is bigger and made for endurance. So from a programming perspective it’s the same, but it looks different.
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