When thinking of a server, most people envision someone who brings you food in a restaurant. In computer circles, however, a server is something different.

Simply put, a server is a computer which serves some very specific purpose. There are many different types of servers: print servers, file servers, web servers, etc. Let’s stick with the restaurant analogy and pretend your printer is Grand Sultan of your office. All of the individual PCs in the office are the sultan’s many chefs, cooking up fabulous documents for the printer’s consumption. Just like a server at a restaurant, the print server delivers the documents from the chefs (your PCs) to the Sultan (the printer) .

A file server works the same way, only this time the individual PCs are all the guests in the restaurant and the file server is in charge of delivering food (files) fom the central kitchen (its hard drive).

Finally, a web server delivers web content from a central location (again, the server’s hard drive) to a multitude of guests (your web site visitors).