In information technology, a server is an application, or device that performs
services for connected clients as part of a client-server architecture.
A server application, as defined by RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1), is "an application
program that accepts connections in order to service requests by sending back responses."
Server computers are devices designed to run such an application or applications,
often for extended periods of time with minimal human direction. Examples of d-class
servers include web servers, e-mail servers, and file servers.
Server is an adjective in the term server operating system. A server
operating system is intended, enabled, or better able to run server applications.
The differences between the server version and the "workstation" version of an operating
system vary. Sometimes (as in the case of Windows 2000 and Windows 2000 Server),
the primary difference is the removal of arbitrary license-dependent limits on the
number of network file share connections accepted. Some server editions include
additional server applications bundled with the operating system. Some server applications
(e.g. Microsoft IIS) impose arbitrary limits on the number of HTTP connections they
will accept, depending on whether they are running under a server operating system or not.
A server computer (often called server for short) is a computer system
that has been designated for running a specific server application or applications.
A computer that is designated for only one server application is often named for
that application. For example, when Apache HTTP Server (software) is a company's web server,
the computer running it is also called the web server. Server applications can be divided
among server computers over an extreme range, depending upon the workload. Under light loading,
every server application can run concurrently on a single computer. Under heavy loading,
multiple server computers may be required for each application. Under medium
loading, it is common to use one server computer per server application, in order to limit
the amount of damage caused by failure of any single server computer or security breach
of any single server application. Any server computer can also be used as a workstation,
but it is avoided in practice, again to contain risk.
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