Servers

Evelon277

Recently, I've become very interested in servers. Don't ask why, I have no idea. Can someone explain to me what they're for? What do they do, and why do they have so many hard drives? I haven't done any research on them yet and you guys have explained a couple things to me which I understood perfectly. So, if anyone has a couple minutes, can you explain to me servers?

tl;dr: explain servers to someone who's between genius and retarded.

Straight_Man

Well, servers exist mostly to store and feed a lot of data. This data can be movies, photos, music, etc. etc. That is the core of servers 101.

They usually require devices that access them to logon to them, with a user or client logon. they require, for major security, a server subversion of an operating system-- Commonly Windows Server in some form or Linux in a server subform.

Servers can serve more than just common data, though-- they can serve websites also. Serving a website from a Linux server is usually cheapest money wise, but takes quite a bit of technical skill to avoid spending the savings back out in tech support fees.

Tushon

Different types of servers have different uses. The ones with a lot of hard drives are probably SAN devices (big, high speed storage), while other servers have a lot of processing power for CPU intensive tasks, like scientific or financial simulations. Other boxes are "VM hosts" which mean they are beefier than a typical server would be because multiple guests are being run on the same hardware (so, multiple servers in that sense). Servers are only different from normal workstations in terms of quality of hardware (sometimes), warranty, expense, redundancy (in some cases), etc. They both take a task and execute it.

PirateNinja

You know when you login to facebook, and then look at your friends profiles to see their new picture(s)?

You are a client, because you login and request data (pictures).

Facebook is a server, because it authenticates your login, renders, and delivers to your screen the picture(s).

A server authenticates and performs tasks on behalf of a client.

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Another example...

You(client) logged in to Icrontic (server) and clicked "Start a Discussion".

Icrontic verified your login, and displayed a form (program) for you to post with. Then, after you posted, Icrontic processed and pulled the data you posted from a database and displayed it to you in a friendly way.
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A client makes requests (request to login, request to submit data, request to display data).

A server processes those requests (process authentication, process data submission, process data delivery).

Evelon277

Huh. That's a lot simpler than I expected. Danke!