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
Another computer that stays on all the time so you can ask it for things it has whenever you want.
It’s simply one half of a common way of splitting computing tasks across multiple computers (the other half is the “client”).
Think of it like being in a restaurant, because that’s the pattern. You’re the customer – the client. You give your server your order. They go off, and after a while they bring what you asked for. You don’t need to know what happened behind the scenes; your server doesn’t need to know why you ordered what you did. You still got your food (or maybe not – keeping things simple here – but even if all you get is an apology that they’re out of syrup for your icecream sundae, the pattern still works; you asked for something, the server went off and came back with a response).
In the case of computers, it’s the same thing, except instead of people, we have computers talking. The client (which could be code running on your phone, for example) sends a request that asks the server to do something (return whatever a hyperlink points at, say). The server goes off, (hopefully) does what’s been asked, and returns a result of some sort. The client code doesn’t need to know how the server did what it did; the server doesn’t need to know why the client made the request it did. Things still happen.
A “server” is more like a job description than anything else.
With computers you have something called the server client model, that describes one way how computers can interact with each other. Other models include a concept called peer-to-peer.
A servers serves up information that a client asks for.
Any computer that plays the role of a server is a server. This means that the same computer can be a server and a client at the same time.
You have programs running on computers that do the serving, these applications can be seen as the server or the entire computer can be seen as the server.
There are special versions of Operating Systems like Windows Server that are optimized to allow a computer running them to act as a server.
The computer hardware itself can also be optimized to allow a computer to act as a server.
One feature of server hardware is redundancy, a hardware server will often have two or more of parts that your desktop computer has only one of. Another is simply being bigger and more expensive. One final feature is form factor servers usually don’t live on people’s desks but in racks in data centers. They end being shaped like big flat metal drawers.
However as mentioned above you don’t need special hardware or a special operating system to get a server you just need a program running on a computer that acts as a server.
Something like a webserver that serves up websites. If you run a webserver program on a computer it acts as a server.
Among the many programs that come with standard operating systems there are a number that act or can act as a server.
Almost all smart devices or Internet connected devices these days have server components. If your printer is configurable through a webbrowser it acts as a server. The little box that you get Internet from is often called a router, but in addition to being a router it usually is a number of otherbthings like a switch or a wifi-access point and several different kinds of server, like DHCP, DNS, NTP and many more.
So in the end anything that acts like a server is a server and a large number of things act asva server if you look closely.
A server is a computer that does stuff that other computers ask it to do.
Commonly, this involves software that runs on the server. Other computers (clients) might contact the server with input information and receive the output information after the server processes the inputs.
A computer that is specifically built to be a server typically has some design features like the ability to swap out hardware without shutting it down, or a form factor designed to be kept on audiovisual racks with lots of other servers, but it’s possible to use another computer as a server. These just do it very well.
Fundamentally speaking a server is just a computer which allows network access to some of its files. You can make almost any computer into a server if it has network access.
Some computers are specially built to be very good at this, like having lots of storage drives and powerful processors and multiple network connections.
A server is a role, like in a restaurant. But behind the scene it’s just a computer, like servers in a restaurant are humans like you.
A server will answer specific requests made by clients, again exactly like in a restaurant : can I have a bottle of water” and “display the content of this page I just clicked on” are two request that servers will answer. It really is similar to a restaurant.
A computer or app that asks for something is called a **client**
A computer or app that provides the thing is called a **server**
This type of relationship is common all over computing and is how many of the apps and services you use are designed.
For example, when you use Spotify, you don’t have the music on your device. The Spotify app, and more generally, your device, is the _client_. They talk to a Spotify _server_ (a large service usually has multiple) and ask for things like the audio, the playlists, album art, artist info, etc. Clients and servers are usually connected through a network (in this case, the internet).
You could also use your PC as a server. For example, lots of people use a second computer in their house as a “media server” where they can store their collection of music, movies, and TV shows. They can then access that collection from multiple devices as long as they keep the media server running.
The word “server” is often used interchangeably for both the app or software that does the serving and the computer it’s running on. Using media servers again as an example, Plex is a media server software. Since the server software is usually the only app running on a computer, the computer it’s running on is also commonly referred to as a “server”.
A “Server” is a computer whose job is primarily to serve up something: Web pages, DNS services, Files, Databases… things that are “served” to users at other terminals (phones and PCs and gaming consoles and… all that). There can be a lot of things that need to run on servers but that list above is a lot of the bigger categories.
Now, way back in the day you’d have “a server” that was functionally just a big PC with a processor and hard drive and ram. This would usually be in a rack mounted box, a lot of time much bigger than a PC. Sometimes fairly flat and wide (a “pizza box” server). Eventually they started pulling the discs out of big servers to more efficiently serve, share, and replicate a whole lot of data over a storage network.
Shortly after storaage networks became prominent we saw multiplexers like VMWare put a LOT of “servers” on a single set of hardware. So instead of one instance of Linux server or Windows server running in each of those physical servers, now you were able to run a lot of servers, all sharing processor cycles and RAM time from a pool of resources in one big physical box. That box still mostly acts like a PC at a laymans level, but no one except the data center admins/architects see the base OS (like ESXi) and they manage that base OS to host a lot (dozens, often; sometimes hundreds) of server OS inscances from the same physical box.
hth
It’s the person who brings you your burger and fries when you get your one lunch break that week.
A PC is a “personal computer” a server is a “business computer”. The main differences are that servers don’t exactly have a monitor, keyboard, and mouse like personal computers do, and servers mainly just send and receive information from PCs and other servers. That information can be web pages, files, streamed videos, etc. They also do some tasks behind the scenes, like running code and performing tasks (an example of a code/task would be a YouTube server converting your .MP4 video to .WebM after you upload it, then storing that file in a database where it sits until somebody wants to watch that video).
The general concept is that a server “serves” files or data. Your computer makes a request to a server (i.e. a web page or download) and it sends you those files or data.
That is my basic understanding, if anybody has input or corrections, put a comment.
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