Computer Servers for Dummies

A server is a computer with special features. It is built with these special features because it is used to manage networks and the computers connected to the network. In organizations, schools or colleges, many computers are used for different purposes. Often, the need for communication between these computers arises. This is where the computer server comes in. All these computers are connected to each other through a computer server, and it is the server that facilitates the communication between these computers, and people can work in sync with each other even though they are physically far apart. But this is just the general idea about a computer server, and you will find the detailed description of computer servers.

The appropriate computer server definition would be - A computer or software program that caters to a certain client computer need. A file server stores files of the client computer. If it is a print server, multiple client computers can use a single or multiple printers through it. Thus, a server serves a specific purpose. Amongst its various uses, an important one is managing a network of computers which are called the clients of the server computer. Now let's see the different types of servers in the next paragraph.

Types of Computer Servers

Computer servers are classified depending upon various factors such as their purpose, the service they are providing, where they are being installed, etc. The following list of types of different servers will give you some more information about servers.

File Server
As its name suggests, it stores the files of all the client computers. It may be used as a backup storage or for general purpose use. It usually has supportive hardware like external hard disks and other forms of external storage devices. It runs special software meant for servers like the Windows Server 2003.

Web Server
A web server is similar to a normal server that works with a number of client computers. The difference is that here the network is the entire world wide web and the server takes requests from many of them at a time through HTTP. These servers have a monstrous configuration like thousands of GBs of RAM and huge storage space.

Database Server
A database server is an important component of a client server model. It is not a computer but it's a program which has two parts one is the server part installed on the server and a client part installed on the client computer. The program performs all the database related tasks like database management, analysis etc.

Video Server
This server stores multimedia files so that the client computers in the network can access them simultaneously or otherwise. It is used in many fields such as entertainment, education etc. This server deals only with the tasks related to video files. Live news is broadcasted through such servers.

Home Computer Server
Simply put, a home computer server is a home computer used as a web server. A web server hosts hundreds of web sites but the home server will host only a single website or sometimes a couple of them depending upon its configuration.

This is only an introduction to the types of servers, and there are many more types and subtypes like proxy server, time server, access server, fax server, etc. There are further subtypes of these servers depending upon their exact use. However, for the purpose of this article, we require an insight on merely the fundamentals.

Computer servers form a vast topic and it is not possible to compress it into a single article. So this write-up was meant only to acquaint you with the basics of a computer server.