What You Need to Know About Servers and Workstations
Computers have become indispensable machines across establishments. When you go to establishments that make heavy use of computers, you will come across the terms servers and workstations. Even if you hear these two words many times, you may still not know what differs one from the other. For most people, they think that every computer user has an entire processor all to themselves. However, this was never the case. The first generation of computer networks get all their processing power from a server or central mainframe. The server connects all of the individual workstations in an establishment. The main processor receives work from each workstation through the limited time that they get. The existence of personal computers has removed such arrangements out of the picture. In this modern day and age, your personal computer is your workstation. Servers, on the other hand, function as central machines that provide your workstations with necessary data.
When you say servers, you are referring to computers with the purpose of handling data requests from other computers. Website servers are the source of data of for computers of visitors to display them in web pages. Meanwhile, the servers on the local network of your establishment or company provides files to the computers of every employee. Servers are capable of hosting applications; however, people can only access the application through their computers. When employees do their tasks, they don’t sit down and use the server. If the job involves maintaining the server, then that is the time that they work on the server.
Workstations are the desktop or laptop computers you use to create presentations or type your reports. Their sole purpose is to generate your presentation or text file. Basically, the computer that you use in the office to do your personal work is a workstation based on the server-workstation model. In the present, however, most establishments only say workstation when they are referring to a group of high-end computers that carry out complicated computer work. Graphic design and rendering and advanced data modeling are some of these complicated tasks.
When it comes to basic hardware, you can expect the same thing between servers and workstations. They both have network adapters, processors, RAM, and hard drivers. You can even take a desktop tower and transform its software from that of a workstation to that of a server. Many companies sell hardware to ensure that servers are kept optimal. One example is the server blade that can help stacking of server racks. Often, servers do not have any video cards that you can plug into your screen. You have to understand that server administrators log into the servers using their desktops and laptops to do maintenance. You can easily transform workstations into servers. Unfortunately, you cannot use the specialized hardware in servers for your simple workstations.