The Domain Name System is an Internet naming system that makes it possible to assign domain names to groups of Internet resources and users, independent of each entity’s physical location. Domain names are easier to remember than IP addresses such as 207.75.188.166 (IPv4) or 2001:db6:1f70::999:de8:7648:6e8 (IPv6). Internet users use domain names to recite meaningful Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and e-mail addresses.

The Domain Name System distributes the responsibility of assigning domain names and mapping those names to IP addresses by designating name servers for each domain. Name servers are responsible for their particular domains. The are DNS distributed and fault tolerant. This makes possible for the WWW to avoid keeping everything in a single central register which has to be continually consulted and updated.

Domain Name System also stores information about the list of mail servers that accept email for web addresses. Domain Name System is a very important component of the Internet as we know it because it provides a distributed keyword-based redirection service.

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?“