A home PC mostly has max 1 simultaneous user (i.e. the “person”) - out of maybe a small pool of potential users - the availability requirement is ad-hoc. It offers many services, some available immediately on boot, but many are on call.
A server typically has capacity to provide services to many simutaneous users and probably has a defined availability requirement.
Depending on the service, and the number of users and the availability and performance requirements it may need more communication bandwidth , more storage, faster storage, more cores, UPS, live backups and so on.
But it doesn’t strictly need any of that hardware unless it helps meet the requirements.
In terms of software any modern PC runs an OS offering a tonne of services straight from boot / login. I don’t see any real differences there. Typically a server might have more always on serices and less on-call services, but these days there’s VMs and stuff on both servers and on PCs.
Most PC users would expect to have more rights such as to install and execute what they want. A server will typically have a stronger distinction between user and sys-admin. but again if a server offers a VMs it’s not so clear cut. That mostly comes out of the availability requirement - preventing users compromising the service.
I’d say the operational requirements.
A home PC mostly has max 1 simultaneous user (i.e. the “person”) - out of maybe a small pool of potential users - the availability requirement is ad-hoc. It offers many services, some available immediately on boot, but many are on call.
A server typically has capacity to provide services to many simutaneous users and probably has a defined availability requirement. Depending on the service, and the number of users and the availability and performance requirements it may need more communication bandwidth , more storage, faster storage, more cores, UPS, live backups and so on. But it doesn’t strictly need any of that hardware unless it helps meet the requirements.
In terms of software any modern PC runs an OS offering a tonne of services straight from boot / login. I don’t see any real differences there. Typically a server might have more always on serices and less on-call services, but these days there’s VMs and stuff on both servers and on PCs.
Most PC users would expect to have more rights such as to install and execute what they want. A server will typically have a stronger distinction between user and sys-admin. but again if a server offers a VMs it’s not so clear cut. That mostly comes out of the availability requirement - preventing users compromising the service.