An introduction to server technology

Perhaps the single largest difference between servers and desktops is in priorities. For power users the focus of their desktop is almost always on performance. More RAM, RAID 0 hard drive arrays, high end graphics accelerators, and overclocking are all attempts to try to push the envelope and get the most performance possible. For a server however, the key above anything else is reliability; the speed of the server doesn’t matter if it’s only up for an hour a day. To this end almost everything in a server is backed up, redundant or simply easy to fix in the event of an issue..