Deploy WebVH Hosting appliance

By the end of this guide, you will have an active Affinidi-hosted WebVH Hosting appliance, linked to your VTA.

Affinidi provisions and operates the underlying infrastructure. You link the appliance to your Verifiable Trust Agent (VTA) and mediator when you create it, then activate it with one PNM command that grants its temporary setup DID access to your VTA.

Use this guide when you want Affinidi to manage hosting infrastructure on your behalf. To run WebVH Hosting on your own infrastructure instead, see Self-hosted (open source): unified daemon or Self-hosted (open source): standalone services.

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.95 or later installed on your machine, to compile the PNM CLI.
• A running Verifiable Trust Agent (VTA) with a did:webvh DID. The WebVH Hosting appliance uses your VTA to authenticate DID creation requests from your applications.
• A Mediator DID for DIDComm-based message routing, based on did:web, did:webvh, or did:peer. See Affinidi DIDComm Mediator.
• Super-admin access to your VTA, which creating the webvh context in Step 3 requires. See Deploy VTA appliance.

Step 1. Install the PNM CLI

PNM connects to your VTA and runs the command that activates the appliance. Install the same PNM version the VTA documentation uses, so PNM, your VTA, and the appliance work together:

cargo install pnm-cli@0.16.4 --locked --registry crates-io

Confirm the installation

pnm help

If PNM is already installed at this version and connected to your VTA, skip to Step 2.

Step 2. Provision the appliance in Affinidi Portal

1. Log in to Affinidi Portal and select your project.

2. Under Affinidi Elements in the left sidebar, select WebVH Hosting.

3. Click Create configuration and fill in the fields:

   

   Field	What to enter
   Name of configuration	A name for your own reference, 3 to 64 characters, including at least one letter or number. Defaults to Default WebVh Hosting.
   Description - optional	A short note on the purpose of this instance.
   Verifiable Trust Agent DID	Choose your VTA’s DID from the list, or select ＋ Enter custom VTA DID and paste it. If the project has no VTAs, type the DID directly. Must be a did:webvh DID. Cannot be changed after creation.
   Mediator DID	The mediator DID from Before you begin. Must be based on did:web, did:webvh, or did:peer. Cannot be changed after creation. To deploy one, see Deploy an Affinidi-hosted mediator.
   Appliance size	Select Basic, the default. Basic appliances are for testing and are deleted automatically after 14 days. Larger sizes are offered on some plans. The size is fixed after creation.
   Version	Shown only when more than one version is available. Leave the default.

4. Click Create. The Portal returns to the WebVH Hosting list, where the new configuration’s Deployment state shows Pending, then In Progress, while Affinidi provisions the infrastructure.

5. Click the configuration name to open its details page. Setup State shows Inactive until you complete Step 3.

Step 3. Activate the appliance with PNM

The details page shows the activation steps under Steps to activate your WebVH setup.

1. Wait for Deployment state to show Complete. Under Step 1: Grant the setup DID access to your VTA, Generating setup DID changes to the command generated for your appliance. The command grants the appliance’s temporary setup DID, a did:key, admin access to a webvh context in your VTA.

   

2. Click Copy. The copied command looks like this, with --name and --admin-did pre-filled for your appliance:

   pnm contexts create --id webvh --vta <vta-name> --name webvh-<subdomain> --admin-did <setup-did> --admin-expires 6h

3. Replace <vta-name> with your VTA’s slug, the local name PNM uses for your VTA, and run the command.

4. Return to the configuration’s details page and, under Step 2: Confirm the grant, click I’ve run the command.

5. Wait a few moments. The page updates automatically: Setup State changes to Active, the activation steps disappear, and Server DID shows the appliance’s permanent did:webvh.

Confirm

Test 1: Setup State shows Active

Expected result: on the configuration’s details page, Setup State shows Active.

Note these two values for the next guide:

• Server DID: on the configuration’s details page. It shows Available after activation until Setup State is Active, then the appliance’s permanent did:webvh.
• WebVH URL: on the configuration card in the WebVH Hosting list. Its host is the domain of every DID you create on this appliance.

Troubleshooting

Next steps

• Create your first hosted DID: register the appliance with your VTA and publish a did:webvh identifier on it.
• Create and manage DIDs: update, inspect, and delete DIDs on the appliance.
• Glossary: terms used across these pages and in pnm output.