What is a server? So that is a topic of this video. Now a server is basically a dedicated
computer that provides services on behalf of clients, such as ordinary desktop computers
or workstations. So it's a centralized machine where multiple clients connect to, either over
the Internet or in a local area network, and they connect to a server for a specific service. So
for example, that service could be to retrieve a website, to access data, or email, and so on. Now
a server could be dedicated to handle one of these services only, where you would have one server
it dedicated for a website, one server for data storage, and a server for email. And this model is
what larger organizations use. Or you can also set up a server to handle each of these services on
the same machine which is what typically happens in smaller organizations. So depending upon which
setup is used it all depends on the needs of an organization. Now when people talk about a server
generally they are referring to a powerful centralized computer that clients connect to
over a network, and they would be correct on that. However a server is not just a physical computer.
A server is actually a role that a computer takes. Because any ordinary desktop computer can be set
up as a server and it doesn't necessarily have to be a powerful computer. So for example you can set
up a network in your home where you can have an ordinary desktop computer serve as a file server.
The computer would have those files in a shared folder and then other computers can't connect to
it to access those files. Or you can also use a desktop computer to serve as a web server,
where you would install the website data on that computer and then the other computers can connect
to it and retrieve the webpage. However desktop computers do have their limitations because they
are not designed to handle a large workload and they can't handle a lot of incoming connections
from users. And this is not only because of their inferior hardware, but it's also because of software.
Because desktop operating systems are only able to handle a limited amount of concurrent connections.
Now servers need to be up and running 24/7 because they are vital to an organization. And if a server
does go down then that could jeopardize a business or an organization. So this is why servers need to
be more reliable. They need to be built with robust hardware that's able to run non-stop with little
to no downtime. So for example, a desktop would use a processor that's designed obviously for
desktops, such as the Intel core series processors. And a server would use a processor designed for
servers such as the Intel Xeon processor. A server processor needs to be fast and had the ability to
perform a lot of tasks simultaneously. Now both of these processors are powerful but there are
some differences. So for example, Xeon processors support a multi processing environment. So they
are designed to work with other processors. Which means you can put two or more Xeon processors on
a motherboard designed for servers, which is what a lot of servers need to handle a large workload.
But desktop processors do not support this, they are only designed to work by themselves and not
with other processors. And another difference is that Xeon processors support ECC RAM, which
is error code correcting memory. And this type of memory is what's mainly used in servers. Now
servers need to be up and running at all times and memory errors could bring down a server and
what ECC does is that it detects if the data was correctly processed by the RAM module and it makes
a correction if it needs to to prevent memory errors. So using ECC memory in servers is just
an extra precaution to guard against any errors to prevent a server from shutting down and Intel Core
processors do not support ECC Ram, however AMD processors do so support it. Xeon processors can also
support a larger amount of RAM. They would have a larger cache memory. And they would also have
a higher core count than desktop processors. And a server should also have hot swappable hard drives
in a RAID configuration because if a hard drive were to fail then no data loss what happened and
the server would still be up and running because of RAID. RAID is what copies that data on multiple
disks and if a hard drive were to fail then it can be removed and replaced without shutting
down the server. And then RAID would rebuild the data on the new hard drive automatically.
And a server should also have redundant power supplies to
keep the server up and running in case of a power supply failure.
And a server also needs to use a server operating system, such as Linux, Windows Server, mac OS server
and so on. Server operating systems are robust and stable and they are designed to run non-stop and
are able to handle thousands of concurrent connections. Now there are many different
types of servers and when I mean types I'm talking about the type of service that the
server provides. So for example, a web server. A web server is what hosts a website. So any
website that you go to with your web browser, you are connecting over the Internet to that
web server to pull up the web site you want. The web server will contain all of the website's
data, including the HTML code and graphics and it will also be running the web server software.
another type of server is an email server an email server is what facilitates the sending
And receiving of email and you would access the email using your web browser or you can use an
email client such as Outlook or Thunderbird using email protocols such as IMAP,, POP, and
SMTP. And a database server is another type of server. This type of server stores data
on the backend and then it's retrieved from computers on the front end, for example using
queries such as SQL. So these are just a few examples of what servers do but there is a lot
more. So thank you everyone for watching this video on servers and the difference between
servers and desktop computers. Please subscribe, follow me on Twitter, and thank you for watching.