Cloud has become a broad term used to describe various products and services, which is supposed to be utilizing the distributed computing model. Strictly speaking “Cloud Server” is just a virtualized computer instance, a Virtual Private Server. However the term “Cloud” should mean that a “Cloud Server” is a computing instance created on top of an IT infrastructure in which the processing power (processing nodes) – CPU and RAM for example – reside on different physical machines than the data storage (SAN or storage nodes).

Some companies define “Cloud Server” for example as “on-demand virtual machine, created to deliver customizable performance and reliability”, although this is pretty much marketeer’s language. Please also be advised that billing a any virtual server hosting service (whatever it is labeled) on per minutes, per hour or per day basis doesn’t make it “Cloud”. What makes it a “Cloud Server” is the ability to scale up the allocated computing resources on demand.

To understand term “Cloud Hosting”, please read article “What does a Cloud Hosting Mean?“

Name server (nameserver) is combination of software program and hardware device which implements a name-service protocol. It maps a human-recognizable domain names to a system-internal, numeric identification.

The most widely used types of name servers are those of the Domain Name System (DNS). The most important function of the DNS servers is to translate (resolve) of domain names and hostnames into Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, which are the second principal Internet name space, used to identify and locate network device, server or computer on the Internet.