What is a server?
At its simplest, a server is a computer that provides services to other computers – either locally in your office or to anywhere in the world via the Internet.
There are many different types of server, for example:
- Web – hosts web sites
- Mail – provides email services
- File – allows you to share documents, spreadsheets and other files between users
- Applications – databases, programs and the other bits that allow an application to support many users
Many servers can perform all of the above functions at the same time – and for small businesses, just having a single machine is a way of keeping costs down.
As you grow though, or if you start to use functions that require more power, a single server typically isn’t powerful enough to do everything – and you’ll need to look at solutions to move these functions onto separate servers.
Nowadays, virtualisation is a technology that can help reduce the amount of physical servers needed by allowing you to run multiple virtual servers on one physical server – in this way each of the four functions above could run on their own virtual machine, but still only take up one physical server – saving hardware and running costs.
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