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A Cyrix PR-200+ with 16MB of EDO RAM , a 1.2GB hard drive and a 200 watt power supply all in a 5 bay AT case. Doesn?t quite sound like server material, does it? Certainly not by today?s standards and it doesn?t take a PC hardware guru to realize this but then what does a server constitute? This is a good question and the answer is somewhat ambiguous. In this paper I will talk about what is considered server hardware and why you probably wouldn?t want to use something like the computer described above for your server. First, we need to establish what the definition of a server is. As stated in CompTIA?s Server+ book, a server is: ?Technically any computer that provides a service on a network. Logically, however, a server can also contain advanced hardware, software, and services that you will not see on any other types of computers. Additional emphasis is placed on server downtime due to their multi-user functionality and general higher profile within a corporation.? So it appears that while technically a server doesn?t have to be powerful in terms of hardware it generally does have faster, more reliable, higher quality components because of the important role it typically plays in a company. Since servers are often