WHAT TYPES OF SERVERS ARE THERE?

To avoid confusion, the first thing you should know is that a server is a computer program that runs on a computer . The problem is that there is a specialized type of computer for this software that has become popularly called a server, but in reality it is not!

In any case, be it wrong or correct, here I will explain all the types of servers that exist. Before continuing, I recommend that you review one of our articles that explains what a server is , you are going to need it.

ALL TYPES OF SOFTWARE SERVERS

There are so many types of servers, how many services can a computer offer, that is, almost infinite. Many of them are not known, because they are part of a very specific solution for a company, a research center, etc.

With this, what I want to tell you is that I am going to show you the ones that will be most useful to you, but be careful, they are not few.

TYPES OF WEB SERVERS

Right now you are using it, the web server is the one that serves a web page , nothing more. Right now you are a client of a web server while you are reading this blog.

And what does it consist of? This server receives a request in URL format , processes it, and returns HTML content to you . Below you have an outline of that operation:

And what is HTML? It is a text with a specific format, which describes to your computer how to display the page. And you see the page as beautiful, thanks to the web browser you are using (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc). This one interprets that HTML code and paints the blog beautifully for you;). If you want to know what it looks like, click the right button of your mouse on this page, and select the option see

DATABASE SERVER TYPES

This is another of the most common and fundamental types of servers, and you use it daily. How? Indirectly, when you save your data in a web application, when you send a WhatsApp or any other activity that is registered in any application, that generated information is saved in a database .

However, you will almost never interact with it directly, you will always do it through a web server, cache, email or any other more focused on supporting requests from external clients. Why ?, for security reasons and to control the registration of problematic data: illegal, erroneous, incomplete, etc.

The mechanism is similar to the previous one, through a client program, requests are sent to the database server, generally using a language called SQL , and the database server processes that information and replies with the required data.

TYPES OF EMAIL SERVERS

Did you know that email was invented in the 80s? And is it still one of the main means of communication today? That's where you can appreciate the importance.

The operation is simple, through an email client, such as Outlook or Gmail, you can communicate with the email server. The way to communicate is simple, both the information you receive and the one you send is transmitted using the SMTP communication protocol.

TYPES OF DNS SERVERS

DNS servers are somewhat special, as they are responsible for understanding a domain name : www.example.com at a public IP and port. Its initials stand for Domain Name System, and they are essential in today's internet . Its main mission is to communicate your computer with the computer that hosts other servers.

There are actually as many global DNS servers as there are .com, .org, .net, etc. domains. These know all the domain names that use that extension, for example, mundoservidor.com is known by the global DNS that contains all the .coms, including google.com or facebook.com. Therefore, registering a domain name costs money.

CACHE SERVER TYPES

Cache servers are essential to ensure the good performance of any web application . There is the peculiarity that the vast majority of requests made on the internet expect the same result.

For example, when you have opened this article, you have asked my server to show you the article. But of course, that implies that my server must process your request, search the information in the database, search the images, put it all together and show it to you.

TYPES OF FILE SHARING SERVERS

File exchange servers are generally used for environments where large volumes of information need to be moved from one computer to another . They use different protocols, from FTP (file transfer protocol), through SFTP (the secure version of FTP), including other less known protocols such as SCP or TCP

The peculiarities of each one are very varied, while FTP is deprecated due to its few security guarantees. On the other hand, TCP is widely used for web file exchanges, such as JS, CSS, etc. And finally, the two most common protocols in development environments are FTPS / SFTP and SCP.

THE TYPES OF COMPUTER SERVERS

As I mentioned before, although this set refers to physical computers , it is incorrect to refer to them as servers. However, because there is such confusion, I am going to treat them as server types in this article. But remember, a server is a computer program , not a computer.

DEDICATED SERVERS

When you hire a dedicated server, what you are actually hiring is a physical computer for your needs. In it you can install as many servers as ports allow you to open (web server, mail, cache, etc).

VIRTUAL SERVERS

When we have a virtual server, in reality what is happening is that we are sharing a physical computer with other users with their own servers .

That means that you are going to share bandwidth, and if you both have a web server that listens to port 80, the time of use of that port you are going to have to share. In short, you are not going to have such good performance .

SERVER CLUSTER

A server cluster is when you use a set of physical computers working in parallel . Widely used in Big Data environments , simulations and websites with high data volumes.