Oracle WebLogic Server 11g Administration Handbook

How WebLogic Server Accesses Source Files

The staging mode specifies how the server copies the deployment files from a source on the Admin Server to the Managed Server's staging area during the preparation phase of the deployment. You can choose to make the deployment files available to the target servers in three different staging modes: stage, nostage, and external_stage. In the stage mode, the Admin Server distributes the deployment source files for applications to staging directories on each of the target servers. Staging the application files works best when you're dealing with small-sized applications. When dealing with large applications that you're deploying to several targets, you can use the nostage option, which requires all servers ...