Computers have become indispensable machines across establishments. For establishments with many computers, you will hear the terms servers and workstations quite often. Despite hearing these two terms countless times, most people are still unsure what differs between the two. For most people, they think that every computer user has an entire processor all to themselves. However, this was never the case. The processing power of computer networks comes from a central mainframe referred to as the server. The server connects all of the individual workstations in an establishment. The main processor receives work from each workstation through the limited time that they get. This kind of processing is no longer evident with the existence of personal computers. These days, your personal computers are your workstations. Servers, on the other hand, function as central machines that provide your workstations with necessary data.
The computer that deals with data requests from other computers is what you call as the server. Website servers provide the computers of visitors with data that will display the web pages. Meanwhile, the servers on the local network of your establishment or company provides files to the computers of every employee. Servers are capable of hosting applications; however, people can only access the application through their computers. Employees will not sit down and work on a server to do their job. They only do so when their work is related to the maintenance of the server.
The desktop or laptop computer you use to create presentations or reports is what you call the workstation. Their sole purpose is to generate your presentation or text file. Basically, the computer that you use in the office to do your personal work is a workstation based on the server-workstation model. In present-day terminology, though, the term workstation is used to refer to high-end computers in the office that do complicated computational tasks. These tasks can range from advanced data modeling to graphic design and rendering.
Speaking of basic hardware, both servers and workstations are similar. They both have network adapters, processors, RAM, and hard drivers. You only need to take a desktop tower and change its software if you are planning to make it into a server from a workstation. For the optimization of servers, there are companies that sell a range of specialized hardware. For the function of stacking server racks, you have the so-called server blade, for example. Often, servers do not have any video cards that you can plug into your screen. You have to understand that server administrators log into the servers using their desktops and laptops to do maintenance. Converting a workstation into a server is very easy. Meanwhile, you cannot expect the other way around because specialized server hardware is difficult to incorporate into workstations.