Setting up a development environment for drupal site
Yes it is possible to have the same DIR structure as on your live site using sym links.

Suppose subsite.example.com is a folder on live site on production you need a link like beta-subsite.example.com -&gt; subsite.example.com And you can use subsite.example.com in both your environments.

SO folders on Live site will be


default
subsite.example.com


In dev environment one extra link has to be created pointing to subsite.example.com.