All companies, large and small, manage multiple environments for the purpose of development, testing, or hosting production solutions. Each of these environments comprise a number of platforms, technologies, and packaged applications across a varying number of servers (whether physical, virtual, or in the cloud). The centralized FlexDeploy server requires configuration information to be able to communicate across this broad topology.

...

Now that we have Environments and Instance, it is easy to realize that there is intersection for both logical constructs. This intersection is known as Environment Instance. Each Environment Instance represents physical installation of some technology. You will configure each Environment Instance for various configuration properties and endpoints, which will allow FlexDeploy to communicate with that specific installation to perform necessary actions. Note that Build and Deploy actions are also invoked in context of specific Environment Instance, i.e. you may be deploying EAR application to DEV environment for WLS1 instance.

So, FlexDeploy allows customers to describe their topology using Environments, Instances, andEndpoints. This topology definition provides the necessary mechanics for configuring Endpoints and properties to effectively manage your enterprise network of platforms, technologies, applications and servers.

Screens used to configure and maintain Topology Settings

...