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Server

A computer, or a software package, that provides a specific kind of service to client software running on other computers.

The term can refer to a particular piece of software, such as a WWW server, or to the machine on which the software is running, e.g.Our mail server is down today, that's why e-mail isn't getting out.

A single server machine could have several different server software packages running on it, thus providing many different servers to clients on the network. In a modern computing environment there are usually two kinds of computer classifications when more than one is connected together to create a network. The server is the computer which provides data and is the central repository, and/or gatekeeper between multiple "client" computers.

A server can also be called a "host" because it hosts the data "served" to "clients", For example, a file server is a computer and storage device dedicated to storing files. Any user on the network can store files on the server.

A print server is a computer that manages one or more printers, and a network server is a computer that manages network traffic.

A database server is a computer system that processes database queries.

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