What is the relation between a web server and a local file serve in distributed systems? I am learning distributed systems ( although I am an Electrical engineer ) using the book distributed systems concepts and design. The author says that &quot;A web server is often a client of a local file server that manages the files in which the web pages are stored.&quot; I cant understand in the first place what is the relation between a web server and a local file server. So please someone explain this statement using a simple example. Thank you very much.
Often the content is stored on a local filesystem (or file server); the web server accesses the content by reading it from the local filesystem (or file server), then provides it to the web client on demand.  So the web server is making use of a local file server -- in that sense the web server is a client of the local file server.