# Application, instance, region, cloud and environment variants [](/en/operations/deployment-variants.html.md "View as Markdown") Sometimes it is useful to create configuration that varies depending on properties of the deployment, for example to set region specific endpoints of services used by [Searchers](/en/applications/searchers.html), use smaller clusters for a "beta" instance, or vary configuration when the same application package is shared across multiple applications. This is supported both for [services.xml](#services.xml-variants) and [query profiles](#query-profile-variants). ## services.xml variants [services.xml](../reference/applications/services/services.html) files support different configuration settings for different _tags_, _applications_, _instances_, _environments_, _clouds_ and _regions_. To use this, import the _deploy_ namespace: ``` ``` ``` ``` Deploy directives are used to specify with which tags, and in which application, instance, environment, cloud and/or [region](https://cloud.vespa.ai/en/reference/zones) an XML element should be included: ``` ``` 2 ``` ``` The example above configures different node counts/configurations depending on the deployment target. Deploying the application in the _dev_ environment gives: ``` ``` 2 ``` ``` Whereas in `aws-us-west-2a` it is: ``` ``` 2 ``` ``` This can be used to modify any config by deployment target. The `deploy` directives have a set of override rules: - A directive specifying more conditions will override one specifying fewer. - Directives are inherited in child elements. - When multiple XML elements with the same name is specified (e.g. when specifying search or docproc chains), the _id_ attribute or the _idref_ attribute of the element is used together with the element name when applying directives. Some overrides are applied by default in some environments, see [environments](/en/operations/environments.html). Any override made explicitly for an environment will override the defaults for it. ### Specifying multiple targets More than one tag, application, instance, region or environment can be specified in the attribute, separated by space. Note that `tags` by default only apply in production instances, and are matched whenever the tags of the element and the tags of the instance intersect. To match tags in other environments, an explicit `deploy:environment` directive for that environment must also match. Use tags if you have a complex instance structure which you want config to vary by. The namespace can be applied to any element. Example: ``` ``` Hello from application config Hello from east colo! ``` ``` Above, the `container` element is configured for the 3 environments only (it will not apply to `dev`) - and in region `aws-us-east-1c`, the config is different. ## Query profile variants [Query profiles](/en/querying/query-profiles.html) support different configuration settings for different _applications_, _instances_, _environments_ and _regions_ through [query profile variants](/en/querying/query-profiles.html#query-profile-variants). This allows you to set different query parameters for a query type depending on these deployment attributes. To use this feature, create a regular query profile variant with any of `application`, `instance`, `environment` and `region` as dimension names and let your query profile vary by that. For example: ``` ``` application, instance, environment, region My default value My beta value My dev value My main instance prod value ``` ``` You can pick and combine these dimensions in any way you want with other dimensions sent as query parameters, e.g: ``` ``` device, application, instance, usecase ``` ``` Copyright © 2026 - [Cookie Preferences](#)