The basics
SharePoint and Office 365’s SharePoint Online have many differences.
Today, I’m gong to walk you through the structure of a SharePoint Server – on-premise – farm.
The top-most concept is the Farm. This is made up of all the servers that together participate and act as a unit.
Individual servers can perform specific or shared roles.
Next comes Web Applications – the entry point to your content. A Farm can host multiple Web Applications, although best practice is to have one per farm. You need to be a Farm Administrator to create these.
At the root of each Web Application is a Site Collection. You can have multiple Site Collections per Web Application.
Inside Site Collections you have a Top Level Site and Subsites.
Your content, in the form of documents and web pages, lives in Libraries. You can also manage calendars, tasks and other data in SharePoint Lists.