Servers are intended to serve other devices. For example, a network server will connect the LAN to the Internet. A telephony server will serve SIP based phones. A media server will send videos to TVs. You get the idea. Servers aren’t meant to look cool, or nice. With that in mind, they will likely sit in a communications closet which is where they belong. While the other computers mentioned in this section could technically function as a server, this is not their role. Servers are designed from the ground up to be servers, and therefore should be used for that purpose. All servers will use the rack mount U standard and range from 1U – 5U.
All server motherboards must support SODIMM memory. This may seem strange, but notebooks need SODIMM and the conventional motherboard can support SODIMM, so it makes sense to use SODIMM as the current standard. The capacity is 64GB per SODIMM, so 4 SODIMMs will support 256GB of memory. All motherboards must support two 2280 NVME drives in either RAID off, RAID-0 or RAID-1 support. All motherboards must support 2 PCI-X1 slots. For ports, the server will need 6 USB ports, and 2 RJ45-10GBPS ports. Wifi is optional since access points can provide for Wifi access, and the server is likely going to sit in a small closet in the basement.
All servers must have four 3.5″ drive bays per U (4 for 1U, and 20 for 5U). Depending on the role, this might be overkill, but there must be a standard for all servers. All servers must have an SDXC card reader. 2 drives can be sacrificed for an optical drive (such as a media server). The only optical drive supported are Blu-Ray writers. Since the server is designed to not need a monitor, keyboard and mouse – then the USB ports are the only ones necessary. If the administrator needs to access the machine directly, they can use a USB KVM switch.