In 1997, HPCC in conjunction with the NOAA Network Operations Center (NOC), created the Silver Spring Campus Web Farm Virtual Hosting Services to test and evaluate the benefits and/or drawbacks of consolidating multiple NOAA web sites in one location. The virtual hosting services at that time consisted of a single server that hosted three NOAA web sites.

Over the years the virtual hosting concept demonstrated its value as a web site management paradigm in several ways. First, by consolidating their web sites on the "Farm," NOAA organizations were able to realize cost savings in hardware and personnel associated with the administration of web servers. Some users decommissioned their existing UNIX web servers after moving to the web farm. Others were able to avoid entirely, the need to acquire, maintain and operate expensive web servers.

Secondly, because the Web Farm virtual server was connected to a secure isolated network, it offered additional security and a more robust, higher speed connection to the Internet.

Today, the "Farm" virtual hosting servers are managed by HPCC and house over 70 NOAA web sites.