I can run a samba or plex server, for example, from my raspberry Pi, my desktop pc, or my laptop. These can all be considered servers as well as desktop PCs.
I could, in theory, buy a secondhand rackmount server from eBay and run it at home as a “desktop” pc with windows or Linux.
More practically, hardware architecture that provides redundancy and continuous uptime. A commercial enterprise server could have multiple hot-swap hard disks in a raid array, redundant and hot-swappable power supplies, and something in the back of my mind tells me that even RAM and CPU can be hot-swappable in some models (am I thinking of IBM power or did I imagine it?).
The advent of cloud and virtual machines could work towards making hardware redundancy and continuous uptime obsolete, but there are cases where servers on premises continue to be used and preferred.
I hope that others will correct me and add further information.
Technically, only intent.
I can run a samba or plex server, for example, from my raspberry Pi, my desktop pc, or my laptop. These can all be considered servers as well as desktop PCs.
I could, in theory, buy a secondhand rackmount server from eBay and run it at home as a “desktop” pc with windows or Linux.
More practically, hardware architecture that provides redundancy and continuous uptime. A commercial enterprise server could have multiple hot-swap hard disks in a raid array, redundant and hot-swappable power supplies, and something in the back of my mind tells me that even RAM and CPU can be hot-swappable in some models (am I thinking of IBM power or did I imagine it?).
The advent of cloud and virtual machines could work towards making hardware redundancy and continuous uptime obsolete, but there are cases where servers on premises continue to be used and preferred.
I hope that others will correct me and add further information.