You can't have $variable
like that in servername and map it to the document root, but you can use mod_rewrite and a wildcard.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName subdomain.example.com
ServerAlias *.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^.]+)\.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}::%1 !^/([^/]+).*::\1
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /%1/$1 [L]
</VirtualHost>
The subdomain.example.com
can just be any subdomain that isn't www.example.com
. For any request that doesn't start with "www", the subdomain is captured as a group (2nd condition), then the next line makes sure the request isn't already being routed into the subdomain's name, and the rule routes it.
So for the request:
http://foo.example.com/bar/x.html
it gets routed to:
/foo/bar/x.html