The server is a computers type which consists of purposeful hardware and software used to provide different services to the clients. Servers generally use different and special applications to provide services. A server can contain a single service or multiple services to serve.

Types Of Servers

There is a different type of servers. We can create a very long list which contains different types of servers but in this part, we will list popular ones.

Web Server
Application Server
Proxy Server
Mail Server
File Server
Virtualization Server

Web Server

Web Server is one of the most used and popular server types. Web servers serve web pages to the clients by using browsers. Web servers generally use Apache, Nginx, IIS or similar web server applications with some web application code which can be written in PHP, ASP.net, C#, Python, Ruby, Java etc.

Application Server

Application servers are very similar to the Web Servers. They provide some functionality to the clients with purposeful applications. Especially Tomcat, Wildfly or similar application frameworks are used to developed applications like programming languages Java, Python.

Proxy Server

Proxy is an intermediate system which will redirect requests to the internet or LAN. Proxy servers provide different roles like authentication, internet access control and load balancing for web access.

Mail Server

Mail is a very important communication option for today’s IT. Mail’s are transmitted between client and server to store mail content for the mail owners. There are different mail servers like MS Exchange, Postfix etc.

File Server

IT workers generally deal with the files for their works. A file server is used to store files in a common place where multiple clients can access, read, change and save them. Especially different types of protocols like SMB, FTP are used to store and serve files over the network.

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DNS Server

DNS is an important protocol to set up naming and communication between systems like the client, server over the computer network and internet. DNS servers are used to translate between computer hostname and domain names and IP addresses. DNS servers can be set up as internal or public for the Internet.

Database Server

The database is a component where business or application data is stored. Application servers generally connect to the database servers in order to get and store data which is used by the applications. There are different database servers like MS SQL, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL etc.

Server Hardware Types

Servers generally have specifically designed hardware where availability and reliability are important. Servers generally used in an enterprise environment where generally different businesses run. A server may have following special hardware.

XEON CPU was designed for nonstop execution
Motherboards generally contain two CPU sockets and slots for SCSI disk types.
RAID Controllers are used to connecting and managing multiple disks. RAID Controller provides different disk configuration where speed and reliability can be achieved.
SCSI Disks are specifically designed for server environments where 7×24 running disks are required.

What Is A Server In Computing and Server Types?