Roles of clients and servers
Servers
A server is a usually a dedicated computer that is part of a network. generally, it is a powerful computer with a lot of memory, one or more fast processors and one or more high speed, high capacity disk drives. As well, it often has the Network Operating System (NOS) installed on it.
Servers usually have one or more of three tasks. These are File serving, Print serving and Application Serving.
File Serving.
The user of the network stores files that relate to their work on this computer. Is is used as a centralised repository of the files for private use and for sharing with others. The major advantages of using a server for file sharing is:
A print server allows many people on the network to use a common printer. When a person wants to print a document, the data is sent to the print server where it is placed onto a queue. Each document on the queueis then printed in turn.
Application
Some applications need to be to process data that is shared by many users. The application is run on a powerful computer which does most of the processing. The client computers just handle input and output.
An example of this is a Library database which requires a Sequential Query language (SQL) server.
Clients
These are the computers that are attached to the network that people use to request services from the server. In the case of file and print serving, they run and manage their own applications and only use the server for network access verification, access to data stored centrally on files, and access to printing services. In the case of the application server, the client usually acts as a dumb terminal.
Mike Leishman