Also known as: Server
A server is a computer that provides services or data to other machines over a network — serving web pages, running an application, or storing files for clients to fetch.1
Overview
Under the hood a server has the same four building blocks as any computer: a CPU, RAM, storage, and I/O. What sets it apart is how it is built and run: for long uptime and to handle many simultaneous clients without falling over, often with redundant power supplies, error-correcting memory, and hot-swappable disks.
The word describes a role as much as a machine. The same box can be a web server, an application server, a file server, or all three at once, depending on the software it runs. A “server” can be a rack machine in a data center, a virtual slice of one, or an old box in a closet — what makes it a server is that other machines depend on it.
Where it fits
This is the umbrella entry for the category. You usually do not buy a bare server so much as choose how you get one:
| Way to get one | You manage | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Web hosting | Just your site | Simple sites |
| VPS | OS and up | Custom stacks, control |
| Dedicated server | The whole machine | Heavy, steady load |
| Home server | Everything, incl. hardware | Self-hosting, learning |
| Cloud computing | Varies by service | On-demand, elastic |
In GopherTrunk terms a server can store and serve decoded data, run the web console, and archive recordings to network-attached storage, but it cannot capture RF — that still needs an antenna and a dongle on a machine with a radio front end.
Sources
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Server (computing) — Wikipedia, on servers as machines that provide services to networked clients. ↩