What really separates a PC from a server? Mainly the hardware, but I guess software too.
In title, can elaborate if needed.
Edit: thanks everyone, I ended up deciding on an m920q for the server.
Server serves a specific application(s). PC is general day to day usage.
Both are computers. Pc hardware can be used as a server. Server hardware can be used as a pc.
Using a computer for day to day tasks - call it a pc. Use it to run a web server application or host a game - that one or more users will access - call it a server
Hardware can be configured to optimise it for its function. E.g pc can have latest GPUs and "servers" can have multicore cpus and loads of ram, rack mounting form factor and dual power supplies for redundancy.
But it could also be weak - i have raspberry pi's and old laptops set up as a servers
Server hardware can be used as a pc.
Correction: not all server hardware can be used as a PC
For example server gpus without outputs mainly used for running calculations
Even these boxes will allow a serial connection. You can just open a tty and you can treat it just like a PC... if you're comfortable on the command line.
Thanks for the reply. This much I understand, I guess a better way to ask would be, what are the differences in "advertised"(for lack of a better word) server hardware that more effectively accomplish the task of serving?
If I were to build a server at home for media hosting, what are the areas I should focus on? I guess a good example is error correcting memory (hopefully I'm remembering that right)
Is that something that's just going to have slightly better performance or is that crucial? And are there other examples of hardware that I should be focusing on?
Honestly depends on whats being served. As i say people can run servers on enterprise grade multi thousand £ systems or a £50 pi or mini pc.
Since you have a specific usage in mind, media server, you basically want hardware that will allow optimised performance so you can have a lag/ buffer free experience.
Say,
hardware thats good for on the fly encoding/ decoding
Lots of ram for multitasking.
Lots of storage to store the media.
Maybe gigabit network cards for multiuser streaming without bandwidth bottlenecks.
It really depends on the experience and chokepoints
ECC ram ill let someone more familiar answer but im leaning towards non critical and nice to have
Nothing you couldnt upgrade on your typical PC. Just makes life easier...at a cost.
ECC is a 'good to have', but isn't critical unless your systems are.
Most of the higher costs that come with stuff advertised as "server hardware" come from the need to get 99.99% uptime instead of 99.9%, because that 0.09% represents millions of dollars, or even people's safety. If you just want to store personal data and run some basic services like a media server or a personal email, then pretty much any hardware will work, just make sure to backup your data regularly in case something goes wrong with your disks.
Consumer grade vs business grade
You could get something that will work for a certain period of time on and off intermittent usage; that's consumer grade.
Want something that will have power redundancy (hot swappable), ethernet redundancy, RAID storage (for redundancy and switching out bad drives), and so on... for staying powered on for 24/7/365 that would be business grade. It's all about the uptime and reaching 5 9s or HA (high availability) .
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability#Percentage_calculation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_nines
For a home server, go get a Thinkcentre tiny m710q for 80€.
Cheap, uses very low power, easy to upgrade and maintain (one nvme, one 2"5 slot, two DDR4 SODIMM 32GB max but people say it's actually 64GB, lots of usb & video ports).
For a business, where the server/PC will run at full speed, generate heat, and eventually break down, you need beefier hardware and redundance.
You all need a backup plan of course but if you lose your home PC it's not the same thing than losing your business...
It's not really the hardware, it's what you do with it. Encode lots of stuff? Don't buy that thinkcentre for example.
If I understand correctly your asking about hardware sold as for “servers”. “Server” hardware features focus on scalability and redundancy. If you’re running a service that’s generating income and the powers that be therefore say it “can’t” go down then you’re starting to pay for redundant systems. Multiple hotswapable power supplies for example.
Most folks self hosting don’t really need to worry about this level of availability as they’re hosting services as a hobby or for friends at most; not paying customers with a boss demanding high availability.
Features you'll find in the machines you'll get if you order from the "Server" section of Dell's website:
The thing is, what really makes it a "server" is the software it runs, and nearly every computer I own is nine kinds of "server". Take for example my Wi-Fi router, it has a little web server running on board, it hosts a web page I can get to by keying its IP address into a web browser from inside my network to get to its settings. It also runs my LAN's DHCP server. New devices get hooked up to my network and assigned an IP address nine or ten times a year when I decide to play with a Raspberry Pi or ESP32 or something, so it doesn't have a lot to do, but it is providing a service therefore it is a "server."
You want to build "a server at home for media hosting." I've got my movies and such stored on a lower end 2-bay Synology NAS, which is a little box about the size of a toaster that sits on the shelf next to my Wi-Fi router/switch thing. It's got two 3.5" hard disks in it, a little ARM processor, it runs Linux, it can do a lot of things, just, not everything all at once because it'll beat the poor thing's tiny little brain out. They make NASes with beefier x86 CPUs that can do things like run transcoding operations for Plex and shit...I just hose mp4s across my LAN.
A home media server is probably going to sit around most of the day doing basically nothing, then maybe do a bit of work in the evenings when you want to watch a movie or something, and then do basically nothing all night while you're asleep. Consumer grade PC hardware is very much up to the task for that.
I've been doing this off Windows PCs for over a decade now. I personally think professional grade servers are way overkill for this and will suck up a ton of energy for little benefit compared to consumer grade hardware.
Realistically you're going to maybe be serving between a couple and couple dozen people at most, charging little to nothing for access, and hosting data that isn't critical for anything, so having perfect uptime and loads of redundancy isn't necessary.
In my experience, what is critical is setting everything up on an OS designed for this kind of work (which isn't Windows) as that's what's caused me grief over the years and not anything to do with the hardware itself. I'm actually planning on rebuilding everything (leaning more toward doing little more than upgrading my OS, CPU, and RAM on hardware from 2018) and just posted about this a few days ago.
Even a lightweight, micro office PC or laptop with a mobile processor would work fine for this power wise, but lacks the ports and HDD mounting space to do the job well.
Anything can be a server really, including your toaster: https://laughingsquid.com/netbsd-toaster/
But typically, servers are built with more performant and reliable hardware in mind. The kinds of servers your PC or phone talk to when checking your email or watching a video are rack mounted and basically look like a pizza box
And a rack can have dozens of these stack on top of one another, and a data center can have hundreds or thousands of racks.
But nothing is stopping you from treating your home PC as a server. The software is the same since the same kinds of chips are in both your PC and the rackmount servers (generally). Running Linux on your desktop/laptop can allow you to do normal computer stuff, AND also share files, host a personal blog, share a printer, run a bittorrent tracker, or a tor relay, or even your own email. Some of this is even possible in Windows versions that aren't "Server".
Your picture shows a blade. A blade is a server....
Pretty much software. Servers predominately run services that other computers use (web server, file server, etc). PCs may run some of those things as well, which blurs the line, but the software they run is meant for direct usage by the end user (word processing, browser, media player).
Hardware wise, at the high end, the hardware is definitely different, but there is a lot of cross over at the mid and low end. The self-hosting community use a lot of consumer grade PCs as their server hardware.
Gonna copy/paste my other comment because it applies here too, especially the thank you part.
Thanks for the reply. This much I understand, I guess a better way to ask would be, what are the differences in "advertised"(for lack of a better word) server hardware that more effectively accomplish the task of serving?
If I were to build a server at home for media hosting, what are the areas I should focus on? I guess a good example is error correcting memory (hopefully I'm remembering that right)
Is that something that's just going to have slightly better performance or is that crucial? And are there other examples of hardware that I should be focusing on?
For media hosting, you can go an incredibly long way without needing to dip into "server grade" hardware.
An old desktop with a GPU and plenty of storage will be just fine, especially if you are only serving a few clients.
ECC isnt really that important, you'll likely never notice if you get a memory error.
The one major advantage desktop PC hardware has is power usage and noise. They are generally quiet and reasonably power efficient, which matters a lot.
My advice would be to start small on an old desktop, and then upgrade when you actually hit a limitation of your current hardware.
I've used parts from my old PC for my Homeserver. Among other things, it runs Jellyfin. Most of my library can be directly played by most clients, so I need almost no transcoding. Just serving the media uses tiny amounts of ram and compute, and the only bottleneck I could see is a residential Internet connection (I've got symmetrical gigabit, but there's lots of residential gigabit that limits uploads to like 50mpbs).
Yes, ECC memory. If used, then CPU also needs to be able to support it. Then there's number of cores, unless you specifically need high single-core performance. Efficient and reliable PSU, low power-consumption, lots of memory, redundancy for storage. Stuff like that.
None of which are essential, BTW. Any working PC can be made into a server regardless of its hardware.
All server really is is just another PC that's been built with a different purpose in mind. The rest is software configuration. They need to be reliable, scalable, and cost you as little as possible to upkeep.
Even your router is the same. It's all computers.
I'm very torn, because people here are correctly going "nothing", but then launching on long descriptions of what's convenient for a server to have. I can't tell if that is answering your question or if the correct answer is just "a server is any computer that hosts a service for some other computer to access over a network". Both?
Hell, technically a server doesn't even need to be a PC at all. You can absolutely have a server and a client be just pieces of software hosted in the same physical machine. "Server" and "client" are just words for what thing is asking for the data and what thing is sending the data over.
A server can just be a PC left working in a corner, depnding on what specifically you're doing with it. Hardware designed to be a server tends to have more power in the places that matter for that job and less (if any) power dedicated to home use stuff like graphics.
I have a server for my family (WELL mostly me and my father). It consists of an old gaming PC with Linux Server Stuff installed on it. Doesn't need to be anything more, it's just Emby (media, mostly films) and NAS stuff.
It's mostly intent and what you run on it.
Technically, only intent.
I can run a samba or plex server, for example, from my raspberry Pi, my desktop pc, or my laptop. These can all be considered servers as well as desktop PCs.
I could, in theory, buy a secondhand rackmount server from eBay and run it at home as a “desktop” pc with windows or Linux.
More practically, hardware architecture that provides redundancy and continuous uptime. A commercial enterprise server could have multiple hot-swap hard disks in a raid array, redundant and hot-swappable power supplies, and something in the back of my mind tells me that even RAM and CPU can be hot-swappable in some models (am I thinking of IBM power or did I imagine it?).
The advent of cloud and virtual machines could work towards making hardware redundancy and continuous uptime obsolete, but there are cases where servers on premises continue to be used and preferred.
I hope that others will correct me and add further information.
A PC (also known as a client) always is the first one to send a request over a network. They are the initiator of every data exchange. They don't receive anything otherwise. And they therefore always know who they are conversing with from the start.
A server is setup to listen continuously on a network. They need to be able to respond to new request from unknown sources. They never know when the next new request will be, or who it is from until they do their data handshake.
Hardware and software have nothing to do with it. Only how it is setup.
Well, a server has to be running software that, you know, serves stuff. Listens and responds to network requests. They do usually also have different hardware-- no need for an integrated screen or keyboard!
You can run a media server on your phone. Like running Octoprint to manage 3D printers on your Android phone for example.
Hardware doesn't have anything to do with the distinction.
It is just that people enjoy servers that are reliable. So they buy better or specified hardware for it. Which makes them easier to manage.
It’s really how you use it. In short, a server is what other devices rely on and a computer is used on its own to sometimes connect to a server.
I have a “server” at home that runs on Windows 11 Pro. There are people who buy (or pirate) the server editions of Windows to use for personal, every day use. Rare, but they exist. Same with Linux, with many distros not having a specialized edition for servers, but people still will use it for a home server or even in a professional setting.
What separates the two, to explain to a five year old, is how they are used.
My server at home “serves” up content for me to use on other devices. I have a library of music and movies and TV shows there that is being shared. Additionally, this server sets up the connection and a local website that my other devices can use to access this content. A server is either rarely off or has a set schedule that it is on since it has a purpose that other devices rely on.
A PC (personal computer) is what you use on a daily basis. This is used either seldomly or at random as it is only being relied upon by a human that will wake it up as they need it.
In a professional setting, a server will host the application that manages the employees of that organization. This server is like a watchdog on the network, making sure everyone is abiding by the guidelines laid out for this network and using proper security to access computers and other devices on the network. A computer in a professional setting is used as often as a human employee needs it. IT may need the laptop to remote into a server and then turn it off and not use it for a few weeks. The manager opens her computer to log in and run reports and then closes when she’s done for the day.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned so far i think: enterprise server hardware often has some form of remote management built in. This allows you to remotely start/stop your server, access the console, or even set up another OS without having to physically go to the server. You can add similar features to consumer-grade hardware, but they aren't as advanced.
"Server" is a really terrible word. There's server software, which is often referred to as just "server". And then there's hardware, which happens to run server software, so it also gets referred to as "server". There's also hardware that's specifically built for the purpose of running server software, so even if it does not currently do so, folks would likely still refer to it as "server".
But yeah, in principle you can run server software on your desktop PC or even your phone, and then someone might refer to that hardware as "server".
So long as it serves something on a networking port, you can technically call it a "server".
I'd define a server as a computer that is primarily interacted with through other networked devices.
Hardware/software doesn't have much to do with it; you can have a server do basically everything you'd need running on windows 11 if you're a masochist.
The only definite distinction is that one provides the service, and the other uses the service.
There is absolutely zero requirement for the hardware or software to be different, aside from changing the configuration to perform the desired task.
You can have two exactly identical machines, one can be a DHCP server, and the other a client. The only difference is that one is configured to act as a DCHP server. This doesn't need different software necessarily, just different settings.
Define "server"...
Every PC can be a server, it used to be common with earlier online gaming and VoIP apps like teamspeak to have someone using their PC as the server. Nowadays, with the cloud and light device like Chromebooks it feels like back in the 80's where there was a couple of server, and people would use cheap low tech terminal to display the console where they work from while all the computing power was located on the servers.
Define "server"...
OP specifically asked exactly for this.
When I think of server hardware I think about systems with ECC memory, NUMA, SAS storage and backplanes, infinaband, redundant power supplies, out of band management and such that's not available on desktop class hardware.
On a server, you usually don't use a graphical user interface (GUI), so you just don't install it. On the other hand, apart from the software that actually does the serving (fileserver need different software than mailservers or webservers), you'll probably install a remote administration service.
A dedicated server might not need any kind of graphical output hardware (you would remote connect to it to do anything on the software side), but it's kind of essential for PC use.
Does this media server need to be accessible when you are away from home? Will you store personal data on it?
Out of band management: this is a server feature that lets you access and manage the server even if the OS is down. That's important if you may be away from home and need to fix a boot problem.
You can simulate some of this with PiKVM (remote console access) and PDU solutions (remote power control).
Redundant power: servers often have redundant power supplies, so that if one fails it can still function.
You can simulate this, with short downtime, by having a replacement ready. Mini PCs make this easy by using relatively inexpensive laptop style external power bricks. But also think about the power circuit - is the server on the same breaker/fuse with something that could potentially take the circuit down while you are away?
ECC RAM: this is about data integrity. If there is a failure in non-ECC then a bit flip could cause data corruption.
You can't really get this without ECC. Using a file system that has anti-corruption features can help reduce some of the risk. You probably trust your data to consumer PC hardware, so this would be no different really. It's about risk mitigation.
And that's the main thing here, deciding on the use cases and prioritizing/budgeting how you mitigate risks to each.
I'd say the operational requirements.
A home PC mostly has max 1 simultaneous user (i.e. the "person") - out of maybe a small pool of potential users - the availability requirement is ad-hoc. It offers many services, some available immediately on boot, but many are on call.
A server typically has capacity to provide services to many simutaneous users and probably has a defined availability requirement. Depending on the service, and the number of users and the availability and performance requirements it may need more communication bandwidth , more storage, faster storage, more cores, UPS, live backups and so on. But it doesn't strictly need any of that hardware unless it helps meet the requirements.
In terms of software any modern PC runs an OS offering a tonne of services straight from boot / login. I don't see any real differences there. Typically a server might have more always on serices and less on-call services, but these days there's VMs and stuff on both servers and on PCs.
Most PC users would expect to have more rights such as to install and execute what they want. A server will typically have a stronger distinction between user and sys-admin. but again if a server offers a VMs it's not so clear cut. That mostly comes out of the availability requirement - preventing users compromising the service.