A server is a computer program or device that provides services or resources requested by other programs or devices, known as clients. This pattern of connecting a server to a client over a network or a device is known as the client-server model.
A server may have many clients at once, or a single client can use multiple servers. Servers also offer a variety of functions, ranging from website and web application hosting, to providing shared disk access, printer connections, and database services.
The word “server” can refer to either a physical machine (such as an Ubuntu server) or to a service provided to clients (such as an OpenVPN server or an Apache web server) being provided to clients.
To learn more about server setups and processes, check out the following tutorials:
Thanks for learning with the DigitalOcean Community. Check out our offerings for compute, storage, networking, and managed databases.
author
Technical Writer
Educator and writer committed to empowering our community by providing access to the knowledge and tools for making creative ideas into a reality
This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.
You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!
Get our biweekly newsletter
Sign up for Infrastructure as a Newsletter.
Hollie's Hub for Good
Working on improving health and education, reducing inequality, and spurring economic growth? We'd like to help.
Become a contributor
Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.
