You can open an existing simulation in a server without explicitly starting the client. In this scenario, the server will start and the simulation file will be opened and the server will simply wait for a client to connect to it. This may be useful if you want to start a remote server from a Windows machine for example.
To open a simulation on a server without launching the client, issue the following command:
% starccm+ -server [portnumber] file.sim
If you want STAR-CCM+ to look for a port number automatically, enter 0 for the port number:
% starccm+ -server 0 file.sim