N1 Service Provisioning System 4.1 User's Guide

Virtual Hosts

A virtual host is a host that is only a source for deployment, such as an instance of an application server. Multiple virtual hosts can exist on a single physical machine. Every virtual host has a parent host, which can be either a physical host or another virtual host. Virtual hosts can be nested arbitrarily, although the outermost parent host must be a physical host.

It can be helpful to think of virtual hosts as containers for sets of related components.

In this example, there are two physical hosts, Host 1 and Host 2. There are five virtual hosts: Servers 1, 2, 3, and 4, and the Admin Server.

Virtual hosts are useful for maintaining multiple instances of an application on a single physical host. They establish a clear distinction between physical machines and the applications running on them. This distinction is especially useful when managing multiple applications that must interact with one another to function.

If your installation requires you to use an administrative server to install and configure hosts, the N1 Service Provisioning System software allows you to define execution plans that specify a virtual or physical host.