A virtualhost node is a container for the virtualhost. It has exactly one virtualhost.

A virtualhost node is backed by storage. This storage is used to record the durable entities that exist beneath the virtualhost node (the virtualhost, queues, exchanges etc).

When HA is in use, it is the virtualhost nodes of many Brokers that come together to form the group. The virtualhost nodes together elect a master. When the high availability feature is in use, the virtualhost node has remote replications nodes. There is a remote replication node corresponding to each remote virtualhost node that form part of the group.

Virtualhost node also provides an initial configuration for its virtualhost. How to specify initial configuration for virtual host is described at Section 5.8, “Virtualhost Initial Configuration”.