Right IT Services BrownBag about Microsoft's SharePoint.
SharePoint combines various functions which are traditionally separate applications AKA Services.
6. 6
SharePoint FARM
Introduction to SharePoint
In order to balance all Services, something else must be used: a SERVER FARM. This is a set of Servers working together
as One System.
A SharePoint farm is composed by one or more server
computers working together to provide SharePoint
Foundation functionality to clients. For simple
scenarios, you can set up a SharePoint 2010 farm by
installing and configuring everything you need on a
single server computer. A SharePoint farm, in a typical
production environment, runs SQL Server on a
separate, dedicated database server and can have
multiple front-end Web servers. A farm can also run
one or more application servers in addition
to a database server and a set of Web servers.
(source book: Inside Microsoft SharePoint 2010,written by: Ted Pattison)