Up until this point I have only been speaking about Application Servers – servers that host some sort of productivity software to be used by the business. However, there is another class of server that is actually used to help define the network itself. For instance, File and Print servers host and manage the network shares and printers. Of course you can always attach a printer to, or create a network share on a regular workstation. But if the person working on that machine screws something up or simply shuts it down, then the entire network loses access to the printer or the files that the workstation was sharing. To avoid this, it’s probably best to have a machine that is dedicated to serving those files (and possibly to dedicated other network services that the entire LAN may need). Although you may be able to dedicate a workstation running a desktop OS (such as Vista or XP) to handle a few of these network services, Microsoft offers an operating system specifically tailored to handle this stuff; Windows Server 2008 (or 2003, or 2000… pick a year).
One of the most useful things that Windows Server can do besides serving file shares and printers is that it can actually be configured to be the authoritative power determining what users and devices belong on your network and what those user and devices are allow to do. When a computer is configured with a Windows Server OS in such a manner, that machine is known as a Domain Controller, and it often manages many of the different services that your network needs. One nice thing that you can get out of surrendering your LAN to a domain controller is that instead of setting up local usernames and passwords for all of your users on each workstation that they might need to log into, you can create users of the domain and give them permission to log into (or not log into) any computer that is part of the domain.
In a Microsoft Windows based environment, one of the first servers that “the experts” (i.e. salesmen) will recommend for a small business is MS Windows Small Business Server (SBS). Now while I don’t think that there is anything wrong with SBS
