A.1. Servers

A server is a computer that provides services. It’s really just that simple. The difficulty comes when people confuse the physical box that provides the service with the actual service. Any computer or device on a network can be a server for a particular service. A server doesn’t even need to be a computer in the traditional sense. For example, you might have a print server that is nothing more complicated than a device connected to the network on one side and connected to a printer on the other. The device has a tiny little brain with just enough intelligence to understand when a particular network packet is intended for it and translate those packets into something that the printer can understand.

In Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard, usually a single computer acts as the physical server box (though you can have secondary servers), but that box provides a variety of services to the network beyond the usual file and print services. These services meet your core business needs, including authentication and security, email and collaboration, an Internet connection, sharing, faxing, and even database services and a full-featured firewall in the Premium Add-on.