Boston Globe Online: Here come the disposable servers "Servers are centralized computers used by businesses or other organizations. Once expensive and bulky, the new models are increasingly cheap and compact. If a server breaks today, it's simply swapped out for a spare. Or the spare is already installed and is waiting to be switched on. Rarely is a box cracked open to repair the failed component. In a sense, servers have become as disposable as electronic appliances that aren't worth fixing even if they could be."