Virtual Hosting

Virtual hosting is a concept that is commonly employed by Web servers. It refers to the option of specifying several virtual hosts within a Web server, each responding to different URL. These are name-based virtual hosts, that is, each host name is mapped to a single real IP address of the server or the cluster of servers. You can do this mapping using your Domain Name System (DNS).

Use virtual hosting to:

• Run several virtual hosts acting as several different Web servers on a single real IP address
• Gain in flexibility by providing different configuration settings for each of the virtual hosts

You must have configured the HTTP Provider Service listen port, so that the dispatcher is able to receive client requests. For more information about this, see Setting up HTTP Provider Service to Accept Incoming Requests .

HTTP Provider Service has a pre-set default virtual host. It can never be removed. The default host has default configuration settings. For more information about these settings, see the Runtime properties of the HTTP Provider Service .

When you create a new virtual host, the system assigns the same settings to it as for the default host.

You can perform several actions to set up your virtual host completely:

• Creating a New Virtual Host
• Defining HTTP Aliases on a Virtual Host
• Activating and Deactivating Application Aliases
• Managing Virtual Hosts Caches
• Changing the Root Directory of a Virtual Host
• Setting the Start Page of a Virtual Host
• Enabling Logging on a Virtual Host