Imagine that you have several desktop computers in your house, one in your office, one in the family room, and one notebook computer that you take with you around the house.
Now, imagine that you have thousands of photographs that you want to process (change contrast, crop, etc.). This is a time consuming process, you want to do this whenever you have spare time. Maybe you need a break from work in your office. Maybe you are relaxing in the family room and want to get something done. Maybe you just got an idea in your sleep and want to implement it right away.
There are several ways to do this. One obvious solution is to use an external hard disk drive to store all the pictures. You take this external hard disk drive with you around the house. This way, you can work on the photographs in your office, living room, or anywhere that you take your notebook computer.
Now, let’s make this scenario more complex.
Someone else (your spouse, significant other, room mate, friend, etc.) is helping you to process the pictures. This other person may work on the pictures at the same time that you work on the pictures.
The external hard disk drive approach is no longer sufficient. This is because only it can connect to one computer at a time. Cloning the hard disk drive introduces other problems as the two drives need to be synchronized at some point.
The proper solution is to use a file server. A file server can be a computer or a stand alone device that houses the hard disk drive that contains files and directories to be accessed. With this, multiple computers can connect to the same file system. This means that multiple computers can access files of the same directory. More than one users can work on multiple photographs of the same folder.
This is a neat solution, not only because now different people can access the same directory at the same time, but also because there is nothing to carry around! File sharing is possible as long as networking is available.