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how does servers and workstation work?

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Go to solution Solved by Razor Blade,

Yup...too much specific information can quickly overwhelm people just wanting a simple explanation. I'll try my best here.

 

Don't get caught up in the terms. Server, PC, workstation they're all just computers. Each name pretty much describes that computer's task. A server computer "serves" other computers. A workstation is generally used for "work". A PC or "personal computer" is generally used for personal things.

 

Now what does this all mean? What do I mean by a workstation is used for work? Can't a PC be used for work? The answer is yes! Remember don't get too caught up in the terms!

 

Great so what is the difference between a workstation and a regular old PC then? The answer can be as simple as not much... depending on what the person that buys the computer wants to do with it.

  • Lower end workstations are "workstations" because their hardware is designed to keep cost low and reliability high for a business to make money. The people using it aren't going to be playing the latest video games...they're going to be typing out documents, sending email, etc. a lot of times companies lease many computers at one time. They're all going to be pretty similar or the same and are meant to be like that so they can run the same type of software and make it a LOT easier on the company's IT department to be able to push out updates to all those PCs to keep them up to date and secure. You wouldn't want any employee's computer to have compatibility issues because of a difference in computer hardware right? Make them all the same so you don't have to mess with all those differences.
  • Higher end workstations tend to be what most people here think of when you ask them. Higher end workstations are generally built for very specific tasks in mind. Many times they're also found with much of the same enterprise hardware as you would find in what most people think of as a "server" (more on that later). You might see these computers boast Xeon processors (yes sometimes they have more than one CPU), something called ECC memory, fast 10Gb ethernet, etc. These beasts of a computer are designed to deliver serious compute power for things like video editing and rendering, 3D modeling and animation, Simulations, things like that while being incredibly reliable to minimize downtime and keep output going. 

Now about that enterprise hardware... what makes that special? A computer is a computer. ones and zeros... Functionally enterprise hardware will do pretty much the same thing PC hardware can do...with two major differences.

  • Enterprise hardware has reliability and uptime first and foremost. Think of it this way. If you're on your PC right now and it crashes then restarts it's annoying. If a business server crashes and restarts it could be devastating... Time is money. If a business computer goes down it can cost that business a lot of money. Enterprise hardware will cost a lot more, but it could save a business from having to deal with downtime. Enterprise hardware is designed to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week with very little maintenance. A lot of said hardware have some nifty features that help keep everything running. Things like ECC RAM or "error correcting code" memory...which in layman's terms means a system that can correct a problem before it happens by checking to make sure what is stored in the memory is correct. Also there are many components that can be "hot" swapped which means able to be replaced without powering down the computer first. Mostly mechanical things like fans and hard drives...but also really important things like having 2 or more power supplies and even the ability to run redundant servers so if one is down for maintenance or failure the other systems pick up the work. Things like that just aren't necessary to the home user browsing the internet.
  • Next enterprise hardware generally balances power consumption with performance... a large data center's power bill for a month can be as much as many people make in a year! Yes these companies need the computer horsepower to run their business but they also can't have a bunch of computers guzzling power like a biker guzzling beer at happy hour!

A lot of people think a server is some special thing. It isn't. A server is just a computer tasked with a specific job...to provide data and services to other computers. Servers need to have reliability priority one because without the server data and services would cease until it is back up and running. There are many types of servers too. Some manage storing data while others might manage databases or web services...just as a few examples.

 

You asked for how all this is connected to each other so here is the simplest explanation I can come up with. PCs and workstation computers have people using them. Server computers have other computers using them. Networks connect computers together. Servers manage and provide resources for those networks.

 

Should you buy a workstation as a home user? Maybe...it is a lot to spend on a computer if all you're doing is watching YouTube and posting pet photos on social media. But if you're using your computer to make a living? It may be worth looking into. Again you'll be spending A LOT more money on hardware with similar or sometimes worse specs than comparable consumer grade stuff.

 

When should you buy a server? The answer is you buy one when you need one...or want one. But never when you "think" you need one. Also don't feel pressured to buy enterprise stuff when all you need is a network hard drive to access your movies and Christmas 2005 photos. You asked about web hosting. I'm assuming you're wanting to build your own website or host a game server? If you're wanting to get into building websites rent out someone else's server for a while. It's nice you wouldn't have to worry about maintenance, downtime, redundancy or backups, or losing power in the middle of the night and your website goes down because your web server has no power. If your business grows enough that no longer makes renting viable then you'll be ready to buy your own server...but be warned that it is a big decision to make and a lot more than the cost of hardware goes into it.

 

 

Hope all this blabbering helped in some way.

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I spent so much time by searching in google and asking my friends,but still I didn't get the needed answer,because of bad explanations...My questions are how servers and workstations and hosting work and how are they connected in the scheme?When to buy server and when to buy workstation? How hosting a server or website work? What is the difference between workstation and a server? For example I watched the movie "The social network" for mark zuckerberg when he wanted to create Facebook, and at a moment he said "we have to buy server to release Facebook". Why he had to buy server,but not workstation? What was the function of the server in his case? For example let's say that the scheme is something like this: I want to create a website like Facebook. I already have PC and I have to buy a server,a workstation? and The workstation is the host(more powerful host=better server performance just like in the game servers:if the host is bad and if there is a place with 20+ players,they start to lag),the server is something like the core(all the database is there and if it's power is turned off,the website will be off too?i rly have no idea) and the ordinary pc's are the users? I rly have no idea how those things are connected and I need to learn that,because I'm oriented to study computer networks and system administration, and I have to learn everything about host,workstations,servers and how they are connected and so on

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Everything is a computer in the end. It depends on your use case for that computer that generally determines it's role. You can use a workstation as a server or vice versa. A server is just a dedicated piece of hardware, usually able to hold tons of RAM and multiple CPUs with high core count but that doesn't mean you have to have a ton of RAM and CPU power to build a server, it all depends on what you want to do with it. You can use a standard desktop as a server. In the end, the server is there to give data to clients asking for it such as other users.

 

The more powerful a server is the more work it can do and the better experience the end user will have, be it accessing the website, game server, application, etc. They are also generally meant for 24/7 use and built with reliability in mind over raw horsepower like a desktop might be.

 

A workstation is generally considered something used and dedicated to local tasks such as programming, video editing, etc. but you don't have to just do that, they are similar to servers in that they choose reliability over performance so they'll last longer and perform for longer periods of time before things generally start to break down. They can use "server grade" hardware a lot of times for high core count processors or very powerful GPUs for video rendering but those parts are usually considered to have much higher reliability and error correction compared to their desktop counterparts. They might also sacrifice things like video output since those parts aren't needed.

 

 

If you have a single server that's hosting a website, for example, and you turn it off then the website goes away. What you'll see a lot of times is websites that are run on multiple servers for redundancy, additional power, etc. and if one of the servers goes down the website will keep running as other servers will keep serving up content.

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Yup...too much specific information can quickly overwhelm people just wanting a simple explanation. I'll try my best here.

 

Don't get caught up in the terms. Server, PC, workstation they're all just computers. Each name pretty much describes that computer's task. A server computer "serves" other computers. A workstation is generally used for "work". A PC or "personal computer" is generally used for personal things.

 

Now what does this all mean? What do I mean by a workstation is used for work? Can't a PC be used for work? The answer is yes! Remember don't get too caught up in the terms!

 

Great so what is the difference between a workstation and a regular old PC then? The answer can be as simple as not much... depending on what the person that buys the computer wants to do with it.

  • Lower end workstations are "workstations" because their hardware is designed to keep cost low and reliability high for a business to make money. The people using it aren't going to be playing the latest video games...they're going to be typing out documents, sending email, etc. a lot of times companies lease many computers at one time. They're all going to be pretty similar or the same and are meant to be like that so they can run the same type of software and make it a LOT easier on the company's IT department to be able to push out updates to all those PCs to keep them up to date and secure. You wouldn't want any employee's computer to have compatibility issues because of a difference in computer hardware right? Make them all the same so you don't have to mess with all those differences.
  • Higher end workstations tend to be what most people here think of when you ask them. Higher end workstations are generally built for very specific tasks in mind. Many times they're also found with much of the same enterprise hardware as you would find in what most people think of as a "server" (more on that later). You might see these computers boast Xeon processors (yes sometimes they have more than one CPU), something called ECC memory, fast 10Gb ethernet, etc. These beasts of a computer are designed to deliver serious compute power for things like video editing and rendering, 3D modeling and animation, Simulations, things like that while being incredibly reliable to minimize downtime and keep output going. 

Now about that enterprise hardware... what makes that special? A computer is a computer. ones and zeros... Functionally enterprise hardware will do pretty much the same thing PC hardware can do...with two major differences.

  • Enterprise hardware has reliability and uptime first and foremost. Think of it this way. If you're on your PC right now and it crashes then restarts it's annoying. If a business server crashes and restarts it could be devastating... Time is money. If a business computer goes down it can cost that business a lot of money. Enterprise hardware will cost a lot more, but it could save a business from having to deal with downtime. Enterprise hardware is designed to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week with very little maintenance. A lot of said hardware have some nifty features that help keep everything running. Things like ECC RAM or "error correcting code" memory...which in layman's terms means a system that can correct a problem before it happens by checking to make sure what is stored in the memory is correct. Also there are many components that can be "hot" swapped which means able to be replaced without powering down the computer first. Mostly mechanical things like fans and hard drives...but also really important things like having 2 or more power supplies and even the ability to run redundant servers so if one is down for maintenance or failure the other systems pick up the work. Things like that just aren't necessary to the home user browsing the internet.
  • Next enterprise hardware generally balances power consumption with performance... a large data center's power bill for a month can be as much as many people make in a year! Yes these companies need the computer horsepower to run their business but they also can't have a bunch of computers guzzling power like a biker guzzling beer at happy hour!

A lot of people think a server is some special thing. It isn't. A server is just a computer tasked with a specific job...to provide data and services to other computers. Servers need to have reliability priority one because without the server data and services would cease until it is back up and running. There are many types of servers too. Some manage storing data while others might manage databases or web services...just as a few examples.

 

You asked for how all this is connected to each other so here is the simplest explanation I can come up with. PCs and workstation computers have people using them. Server computers have other computers using them. Networks connect computers together. Servers manage and provide resources for those networks.

 

Should you buy a workstation as a home user? Maybe...it is a lot to spend on a computer if all you're doing is watching YouTube and posting pet photos on social media. But if you're using your computer to make a living? It may be worth looking into. Again you'll be spending A LOT more money on hardware with similar or sometimes worse specs than comparable consumer grade stuff.

 

When should you buy a server? The answer is you buy one when you need one...or want one. But never when you "think" you need one. Also don't feel pressured to buy enterprise stuff when all you need is a network hard drive to access your movies and Christmas 2005 photos. You asked about web hosting. I'm assuming you're wanting to build your own website or host a game server? If you're wanting to get into building websites rent out someone else's server for a while. It's nice you wouldn't have to worry about maintenance, downtime, redundancy or backups, or losing power in the middle of the night and your website goes down because your web server has no power. If your business grows enough that no longer makes renting viable then you'll be ready to buy your own server...but be warned that it is a big decision to make and a lot more than the cost of hardware goes into it.

 

 

Hope all this blabbering helped in some way.

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5 hours ago, Razor02097 said:

Yup...too much specific information can quickly overwhelm people just wanting a simple explanation. I'll try my best here.

 

Don't get caught up in the terms. Server, PC, workstation they're all just computers. Each name pretty much describes that computer's task. A server computer "serves" other computers. A workstation is generally used for "work". A PC or "personal computer" is generally used for personal things.

 

Now what does this all mean? What do I mean by a workstation is used for work? Can't a PC be used for work? The answer is yes! Remember don't get too caught up in the terms!

 

Great so what is the difference between a workstation and a regular old PC then? The answer can be as simple as not much... depending on what the person that buys the computer wants to do with it.

  • Lower end workstations are "workstations" because their hardware is designed to keep cost low and reliability high for a business to make money. The people using it aren't going to be playing the latest video games...they're going to be typing out documents, sending email, etc. a lot of times companies lease many computers at one time. They're all going to be pretty similar or the same and are meant to be like that so they can run the same type of software and make it a LOT easier on the company's IT department to be able to push out updates to all those PCs to keep them up to date and secure. You wouldn't want any employee's computer to have compatibility issues because of a difference in computer hardware right? Make them all the same so you don't have to mess with all those differences.
  • Higher end workstations tend to be what most people here think of when you ask them. Higher end workstations are generally built for very specific tasks in mind. Many times they're also found with much of the same enterprise hardware as you would find in what most people think of as a "server" (more on that later). You might see these computers boast Xeon processors (yes sometimes they have more than one CPU), something called ECC memory, fast 10Gb ethernet, etc. These beasts of a computer are designed to deliver serious compute power for things like video editing and rendering, 3D modeling and animation, Simulations, things like that while being incredibly reliable to minimize downtime and keep output going. 

Now about that enterprise hardware... what makes that special? A computer is a computer. ones and zeros... Functionally enterprise hardware will do pretty much the same thing PC hardware can do...with two major differences.

  • Enterprise hardware has reliability and uptime first and foremost. Think of it this way. If you're on your PC right now and it crashes then restarts it's annoying. If a business server crashes and restarts it could be devastating... Time is money. If a business computer goes down it can cost that business a lot of money. Enterprise hardware will cost a lot more, but it could save a business from having to deal with downtime. Enterprise hardware is designed to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week with very little maintenance. A lot of said hardware have some nifty features that help keep everything running. Things like ECC RAM or "error correcting code" memory...which in layman's terms means a system that can correct a problem before it happens by checking to make sure what is stored in the memory is correct. Also there are many components that can be "hot" swapped which means able to be replaced without powering down the computer first. Mostly mechanical things like fans and hard drives...but also really important things like having 2 or more power supplies and even the ability to run redundant servers so if one is down for maintenance or failure the other systems pick up the work. Things like that just aren't necessary to the home user browsing the internet.
  • Next enterprise hardware generally balances power consumption with performance... a large data center's power bill for a month can be as much as many people make in a year! Yes these companies need the computer horsepower to run their business but they also can't have a bunch of computers guzzling power like a biker guzzling beer at happy hour!

A lot of people think a server is some special thing. It isn't. A server is just a computer tasked with a specific job...to provide data and services to other computers. Servers need to have reliability priority one because without the server data and services would cease until it is back up and running. There are many types of servers too. Some manage storing data while others might manage databases or web services...just as a few examples.

 

You asked for how all this is connected to each other so here is the simplest explanation I can come up with. PCs and workstation computers have people using them. Server computers have other computers using them. Networks connect computers together. Servers manage and provide resources for those networks.

 

Should you buy a workstation as a home user? Maybe...it is a lot to spend on a computer if all you're doing is watching YouTube and posting pet photos on social media. But if you're using your computer to make a living? It may be worth looking into. Again you'll be spending A LOT more money on hardware with similar or sometimes worse specs than comparable consumer grade stuff.

 

When should you buy a server? The answer is you buy one when you need one...or want one. But never when you "think" you need one. Also don't feel pressured to buy enterprise stuff when all you need is a network hard drive to access your movies and Christmas 2005 photos. You asked about web hosting. I'm assuming you're wanting to build your own website or host a game server? If you're wanting to get into building websites rent out someone else's server for a while. It's nice you wouldn't have to worry about maintenance, downtime, redundancy or backups, or losing power in the middle of the night and your website goes down because your web server has no power. If your business grows enough that no longer makes renting viable then you'll be ready to buy your own server...but be warned that it is a big decision to make and a lot more than the cost of hardware goes into it.

 

 

Hope all this blabbering helped in some way.

the best answer ever. thank you,sir.

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