What Is a Server and What Are Server Requirements?

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What Is a Server and What Are Server Requirements?

The first product I sold in this business, was a memory upgrade for an HP/9000 server, sent to a major rail company back in Y2K. I sourced it all from none other than John Selleck, who still works here at Alta Technologies

Knowing I could affordably help a great American company keep the "trains on the tracks" (so to speak - aka keep their servers operating at top speed) made me immediately fall in love with this industry. Now I love to teach new employees and readers alike about servers, enterprise IT and the value of independent refurbished server options.

So - what is a server and what are server requirements? Let's get on with it.

What Is A Server?

A server is a physical piece of hardware that is very similar to, in some ways, a personal computer, but with enterprise manufacturing and capabilities, great processing power, extended space for disk drives, enterprise-grade motherboard and system bus capabilities, IO capabilities to serve heavy-duty workloads in a company (or for a specific purpose and/or software application).

These days, many servers are virtually accessed as "cloud servers" for user needs. The user "spins them up" in a virtual instance... although somewhere - possibly in an endless, cold, dark data center in another state or country, there actually exists a physical server or servers.

I often say that "the cloud is heavy" because of this. You just store your data or run your compute on someone else's server.

For non-tech people, I like to simplify servers as "the computers that run the computers". If you're not in IT and ever seen a tower server, you've likely asked yourself - how is this different than a PC? A rackmount server tends to stand out more, shaped like a deep pizza box (or multiple pizza boxes for more robust systems). Some servers are even the size of a refrigerator, but those are less common here in the mid-2020s. 

Software applications and enterprise workloads are deployed and installed onto these physical servers to serve a specific organizational purpose. Servers may also be scaled up into server farms, data centers, and server racks in order to support the heavy-duty computing capacities required by a corporation, the central network, the central data center, or a server room of that company - to support all of their users and the software that is needed to run that computer network.


What Are Server Requirements?  

Server requirements (or "server reqs") are a list of requested specifications for the physical hardware required, in order to run a software application or business computing workload.

Let's say you want to run a specific version of Microsoft Exchange on a server (and who would these days - c'mon O365 is where it's at - we're a server and even utilize cloud email here)!

Anyway, for some niche reason, you still run local Exchange for email. The server manufacturer will give you a minimum requirement (or a range) needed to run their software (application) on your server. This could be a certain number and speed of processors, a minimum memory capacity, hard drive configuration or other specs they'd prefer you have to keep that software running right.

In summary - the manufacturer, provider or author of the software application will provide a set of server requirements which are meant to be minimum server requirements.

While useful, these minimum requirements are just that, and not optimal or ideal server requirements, meaning a list of the memory, CPUs, hard drives, and other components of the server that an administrator should consider when ordering or building up a system to deploy their application on.

An "optimal" configuration isn't always advertised. IT architects and admins often determine these optimal builds on their own, sometimes with the help of peer networks or forums, for the best use of the hardware systems when paired with the application and/or business use case. VARs, MSPs and resellers can help with "optimal" server reqs as well.

Summary: A server, akin to a powerful computer, is crucial for deploying software applications and enterprise workloads in organizations. Server requirements, often specified by software providers, outline the necessary hardware specifications for optimal performance in running applications or business workloads.

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Last updated:
April 3rd, 2024

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Author: Corey Donovan

Corey is a reuse advocate with 20 years experience in ITAD and serves as President of Alta Technologies, the gold standard for quality in testing and refurbishing servers, networking and data storage hardware, since 1995.

An active member of the Right-To-Repair movement, Corey also serves on the ASCDI Board, is a member of the Forbes Business Council, Vistage, SIA and UNEDA. He enjoys local adventures with his family and dog, Freya, near Minneapolis, MN.

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