Each notebook or desktop or server is run by an Operating System - the low-level software which interacts with the hardware equipment, including peripheral devices such as a mouse and a printer, along with any applications that are currently installed on the system. Any program input through a command line or a Graphical User Interface (GUI) is processed by sending an Application Program Interface (API) request to the OS. On a web server, any app runs within the parameters specified by the OS as well - priority, physical memory, processing time, etcetera. This is valid for both standard site scripts and server-side software such as a media server. When a virtual server is created on a physical one, there can be two separate Operating Systems, called guest OS and host OS, so you can set up a different software environment on the very same machine.