Sun Java System Web Server 6.1 SP12 Installation and Migration Guide

Creating a DNS Alias for the Server

If your server will run on one machine among many in a network, you or your system administrator should set up a DNS CNAME record or an alias that points to the actual server machine. Later, you can change the actual hostname or IP address of the server machine without having to change all URLs that point to the server machine.

For example, you might call the server my_server.my_company.com and then use an alias like www.my_company.com. So the URLs to documents on your server would always use the www alias instead of my_server.