Need some education on servers?

we have a server. but we are paying someone to host our website. shouldn't our server be doing this?

in our business no one shares files on the server, they keep them in their documents file and send them back & forth by email..so is there even a reason that we need a server? other than blowing a few grand a year to maintaining it? does the server have some hidden purpose that i am unaware of?

links to educational websites (dummed down) would help. thanks!

we're using ms exchange for windows. the computer is a dell with a removable tape drive backup.

i thought that the email could just come from our host, like it does with my home computer. why would that need to be stored on our own server?

Sound like your server is just serving a network authentication purpose (unless it also acting as your email server). If you are spending that much to keep it running and that is all you use it for, I would just dump it (unless it also acting as your email server). While you can run your website on the server it will chew up your bandwidth so remote hosting is probably a better solution unless you have huge internet pipe.

Your server may be managing the email. It could be also providing security even if you are not aware of it. If the server is providing security, then it sounds like you are just not using it to its full capabilities.

I can't provide resources for you without more information though. This is a huge topic!

So the first place you need to start is to find out what the server does, not what it does not do. I'm assuming it is Microsoft Windows... one way to see if it is controlling security, is to see what happens when you switch to a co-worker's computer and try to log in. If the same name and password you use to access your own computer works at the co-worker's computer too, then your server is *probably* controlling the security.

If you can post what kind of server it is--- Windows, Novell, UNIX, etc, but don't worry about it being Dell, HP, IBM, etc--- and what happens when you log into another computer, that will give us techie types a little more information to go on, and then we can start getting some info for you!

Do you use the server for loggin in or as a file server or an email server or for printing? Many reasons for this. In order to host your own website you will probably spend more on upkeep then you do now hosting it elsewhere. Also, you need to have enough bandwidth to host your site as well as a fast and powerful server. If you get a lot of hits to your site, hosting it on your own may slow page loads. Lots to think about. As far as educational websites, what kind of OS is the server running? Then you can google it.