The Stack

a stack is made up of various computing components which provide different functionality. Typically a stack will include (but is not limited to): Operating System (OS) + Web Server (WS) + Database (DB) + Software (SW) = base components for a service. Common platform stacks that are put onto "blank servers" are things like the LAMP stack: Linux OS, Apache WS, MySQL DB and a Programming Language (usually Perl, Python or PHP) based SW. The various kinds of components in a stack will define what kind of service it is.