This page could be summarized with the statement: don't require Apache to use DNS for any parsing of the configuration files . ... In order for Apache to function properly it absolutely needs to have two pieces of information about each virtual host: the ServerName and at least one IP address that the server responds to. ... use IP addresses in Listen . ... In any event it doesn't seem possible to reliably boot a virtual-hosted web server when DNS has failed unless IP addresses are used. ...