MS Small Business server

Designed and priced for small businesses, Windows Small Business Server 2011 was an affordable, all-in-one server solution to help your business run more efficiently. It provided core functionality for:

• Networking
• Advanced e-mail and calendar capabilities
• Document and printer sharing
• Database and line-of-business support
• Remote Access
• Security

Windows Small Business Server offered you a server solution with reduced complexity and increased manageability over traditional enterprise servers, helping to focus on running a more efficient business. Small business server (SBS) has been superseded by the 'Foundation Server' and Office365

Windows Server 2019 Foundation

Windows Server 2019 Foundation has caused a bit of an upset amongst It professionals as it no longer features the remote access advantages present in Windows 2016 Foundation editions. It instead is essentially a cheaper version of Windows Server Standard that limits you to 25 users. This means that accessing your file from anywhere is more complex and small businesses are less able to configure settings on their own accord. This is essentially a sign that small business is expected to store all data on Office 365 from now on.

Email and File Servers

Some customers have special needs for email that means that they do not wish to have them sent via a third party due to technical reasons or they require special security considerations no met by Google G Suite or Microsoft Office365. Other customers simply do not wish to enter into a subscription agreement for email or do not wish to trust a third party provider with a service so close to the core of their business function. In these cases, customers prefer to operate an in-house email at their own premises.

Other customers have complex requirements for databses that may need to perform very fast, such as for trading or some other time-dependent process. In cases of very high performance the Internet may not be the best location for data to be stored. These customers may operate a single or several servers from their own office.

Clients and Servers

Your computer is a 'client' to your computer network, in that it is expecting service. This service comes in several flavours and from different suppliers. If you have an email server then your email is served to you by that email server. If you have a database stored on your network on a database server then that is served to your client computer by that database server. The Internet may be served from a firewall or router to your client machine and your client responds to these servers who pass the requirements on to other suppliers in their supply chain.

Linux PCs and Servers

Linux is an open-sourced, community-developed operating system software that has been perfected by people all around the world for many years. As a result it is favoured by experimental computing users as well as discerning home and business users. Linux can be used to create and edit office documents just as with Microsoft Office except that all of the software is free to use.

Linux is favoured by super-computer users as it is so adaptable and stable. It also enables a very modular approach to computing in that , if it isn't needed, it isn't loaded and so the system runs very fast and clean. If you are hosting websites or databases then Linux is most likely the platform you are using.

Database Servers

A database server receives and replies to requests made to a set of data. That set of data might be the financial accounts of a company, the health of hospital patients, or the videos on YouTube. A database is made up of lots of 'fields' which pertain to a certain site, such as the age, date of birth and weight of a person. These fields are linked together in certain ways and processed to enable reporting and processing of the data in a meaningful way to the users of the database. Your client PC receives the data from the database server and presents that data in a way that you can use it, which is what we call information.