Hosting Terms, for Name Holders
A VPS gives your names an address of their own
Somebody has told you a VPS will let you run your own nameservers — here is what that actually involves at the registry.
The short answer
A VPS is a slice of a physical server run as a machine in its own right, and for anyone managing names the useful part is the network identity that comes with it: a dedicated IP address, a reverse DNS entry you can have set, and the ability to run authoritative nameservers on a domain you own.
Those three things are what shared hosting cannot give you. Everything else about a VPS — root access, your own software, a fixed monthly figure — is a bonus for the person who wanted them anyway.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
0
Terms left unexplained
100+
Entries, each linked to its neighbours
Real
Examples, taken from live zones
Free
To read, with no account needed
A hypervisor divides one machine into several self-contained ones, each booting its own operating system with a guaranteed allocation of memory and CPU. KVM runs on every node here, which means the allocation is real hardware division rather than a burstable figure.
The freedom is genuine and so is the obligation. Once nameservers run on your own machine, DNS for every name delegated to them is your responsibility — including the fact that it stops answering when you reboot.
Naming a nameserver is not registering one
Two separate jobs are involved and people routinely do only the first. Job one: tell the software that ns1.yourdomain.com and ns2.yourdomain.com are its names. Job two: register those hostnames at your registrar as host records, so the registry publishes the glue — the A record that tells the world which IP ns1 lives at.
Without the glue, resolvers are asked to look up ns1.yourdomain.com in a zone that only ns1.yourdomain.com can answer for. That circle is why a new private nameserver often works from the machine itself and from nowhere else.
Two nameservers on one VPS is one nameserver
Delegating a name to ns1 and ns2 that share a single machine gives you the appearance of redundancy and none of the substance. Reboot the VPS to apply a kernel update and every name delegated to it stops resolving — not slowly, and not only for your website.
The fix is a second nameserver somewhere else: a secondary DNS service, a second VPS on a different network, or the honest option of leaving DNS with a provider whose only job it is. Authority is one of the few things worth not self-hosting.
Reverse DNS becomes yours to ask for
The PTR record for your address lives in the in-addr.arpa zone held by whoever owns the address block, so it is requested from the provider rather than typed into your own zone. On a VPS that request is normally granted, and a forward name matching its reverse entry is what strict receiving mail servers look for.
Set the forward record first. A PTR pointing at mail.yourdomain.com with no A record behind it looks worse to a receiving server than no PTR at all.
Checks before you move a delegation
Query the new server directly before the registry ever hears about it: dig @your.ip example.com SOA should return your serial, and the same query over TCP should answer too, because zone transfers and long responses need port 53 open on both protocols.
Then compare the new zone against the old record by record, MX and TXT included, and only then change nameservers at the registrar. Delegation is the last step, not the first — it is the one step that is visible to everybody.
Where delegation, glue and reverse DNS get explained together
Private nameservers are the classic example of a job that is documented in two halves by two different companies, neither of which mentions the other. This glossary keeps the host's side and the registrar's side on the same page, because that is where the missing step always is.
Support means a person at any hour, including the awkward questions about somebody else's registrar.
- Written by the people who answer the transfer tickets
- Locks and grace periods given in days, not folklore
- Panel screens named, so you know where to click
- Open to read, with no account and no mailing list
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Glue records explained at both ends
The panel half and the registrar half of a private nameserver, described in one place and in the order they have to be done.
Ownership before convenience
Where a shortcut quietly costs you control of a name, the entry says so before it explains how the shortcut works.
Redundancy taken seriously
Why two nameserver names on one machine is a single point of failure with better branding, and what to do instead.
Panel screens named
You are told which screen to open, not merely which concept to hold in your head while you go hunting for it.
Reverse DNS as a procedure
Who holds the PTR record, how to ask for it, and the forward record that has to exist before you do.
A safe order of operations
Where a job has an order that avoids downtime, the order is spelled out: confirm authority, lower the cache, change one thing, verify from outside.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Register the host records first
Create ns1 and ns2 as host records at the registrar for the domain that will carry them, so the registry publishes the glue before anything depends on it.
- 2
Interrogate the server directly
Query the VPS by IP for the zone's SOA over both UDP and TCP. If it cannot answer you, it certainly cannot answer a resolver.
- 3
Delegate last, and one name at a time
Move a name you can afford to break before you move the one that carries your mail. Nameserver changes are visible to the whole internet at once.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- Your site lifted off the old host and set down here, at no charge
- SSH on the developer plans, Git and Composer already installed
- 99.9% uptime as the target, watched around the clock
- Thirty days money back on hosting plans, seven on reseller
- Upgrades applied in place, so changing plan is not a migration
- Hosting renewed at the rate you ordered at, year after year
- The auth code issued from your client area, with no retention call to sit through
- Mailboxes on your own name included, not sold back at the checkout
- MailChannels on outbound mail, so post leaving your name arrives
- A backup taken daily, with restores you run yourself from the panel
Frequently Asked
Questions we field again and again
Do I need a VPS to run nameservers on my own domain?
To run authoritative nameservers yourself, yes — you need an address that stays put and a machine you control, which shared hosting does not provide. But you do not need to run them yourself to have nameservers wearing your own domain: a managed DNS provider or a reseller platform will let you delegate ns1.yourdomain.com to their infrastructure, which gives you the branding and somebody else's redundancy.
What is a glue record, in one paragraph?
It is the A record for a nameserver, stored in the parent zone by the registry rather than in the zone the nameserver serves. Ask a resolver where example.com lives and it is told ns1.example.com; without glue it would have to ask ns1.example.com where ns1.example.com is. The registry breaks that circle by publishing the address alongside the delegation, and it does so only when you have registered the hostname at your registrar.
Who is the registrant of a name ordered through you?
You are. The name is registered in your own details, stays registered in your name for the term you have paid for, and can move to any registrar once the standard 60-day window has passed. A supplier that registers your name in its own details has taken the asset, whatever the invoice says.
How soon after registering can a name be moved?
Not within 60 days of a registration or of a previous transfer. That clock belongs to the registry rather than to us, so no amount of goodwill at either registrar shortens it. Plan a move around the date and the transfer is paperwork; ignore it and the request is simply refused.
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