Server Farm

Understanding the Server Farm

Technology has brought with it many new terms and services that go misunderstood and just not understood by many people. One of these instances is something known as a server farm. A server farm is simply a group of computers that is kept in a single location. Also known as a computer cluster, computer engineers group many servers together when demands are being placed on a computer server that may be impractical or impossible for only one server to handle.

At first, server farms found heavy usage in places like academic research universities and big companies that provided computer services. Since companies and computers have become much more mainstream, their benefits can now be enjoyed by companies of all sizes and demands. They also are usually made up of primary and backup servers, allowing tasks to be delegated across the entire spectrum of computers that the farm has at its disposal. The goal of doing this is to maintain server functionality and keep a company or university’s servers from going offline if a problem arises. The server simply switches the task from the primary server to the backup server if something happens, allowing maximum uptime.

Server farms are providing a better, more feasible solution to the mainframe computers many large companies have been using for years. If they aren’t replacing they’re mainframes with server farms, they are using its benefits to supplement the mainframe layout. It’s important to understand, though, that a server farm isn’t considered as reliable as a mainframe computer. Many companies have trained staff on hand to fix and address issues as they arise since server failure can happen fairly regularly.

Getting a server farm up requires coordination, usually across a team of specialized technicians and IT professionals. Since many companies rely on certain functions that a server farm can present, outside companies that are building the farm often also provide a level of help desk support for their customers. These farms don’t necessarily have a size limit either. They range from small to large with some being as small as just a few servers connected together. On the other end of the spectrum, there are companies out there that utilize entire warehouse sized buildings of servers. Obviously, the more complex the farm becomes with an increasing number of servers to keep up, the more they require a specialized team to support them and be on hand in the event of server failure or other issues.