The other major player in server operating systems is the Linux/Unix realm. There are multiple versions and flavors of Linux/Unix including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Debian, and CentOS. As an open-source operating system, Linux is very popular as a web server, often with the Apache web application server installed.
NetWare
Although no longer made, NetWare was a major player in the server software space as the client-server era was ramping up. Eventually, NetWare moved its server operating system to a Linux-based kernel and named it a Novell Open Enterprise Server (OES).
Cloud servers
Virtual servers hosted on a third-party infrastructure on an open network, such as the Internet, are called cloud servers. There are numerous cloud server providers these days, including Google’s Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and IBM Cloud.
However, the main pioneer of corporate cloud computing was Amazon’s AWS platform. It originally started using spare capacity of Amazon’s own servers and networks, but AWS now allows customers to create a virtual server nearly instantly and then adjust the amount of resources that server may use on the fly.
Today, a server can be nothing more than the data of physical hardware that consists of multiple processors, disk drives, memory, and network connections. But, even now, a server is still just a system that responds to a request from a client.
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