What is a LAMP-Server?

In my job, I am often confronted with the question, what is meant, when talking about a so-called LAMP-Server. The assumptions range from a manufacturing company for servers named "LAMP" up to a particular hardware configuration. Both is not right and therefore, I would like to respond to the topic today.

LAMP stands for the first letters of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. In other words, a LAMP server is just a server using the combination of the Linux operating system, the Apache web server, the MySQL database and the PHP programming language.

This software combination has been proven in practice and is used in many dynamic websites today: Linux and Apache are providing the basis, PHP is used for creating dynamic websites and the content is coming from a MySQL database.

On the other hand, LAMP does not say anything about the hardware of the server. The LAMP software can be operated both on low-cost and high-end servers.

Less common are variations such as WAMP (Windows operating system), MAMP (Apple Macintosh), SAMP (Solaris) or FAMP (FreeBSD).