you can indeed use the mod_proxy module. It runs fine with vhosts.
Basically, the main server will receive all the requests, and when a certain url/domain is called, mod_proxy will redirect this domain to another server (server 2) it looks like this on server 1
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName server1.com
Hosted on the server
</VirtualHost *>
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName server2.com
// mod_proxy directives in order to redirect this domain name to the other server //
</VirtualHost>
And there is a good tutorial :
http://www.apachetutor.org/admin/reverseproxies
To be fairly honest with you, the best approch i can see for this would be if you setup your main domain normally like this:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.example.com
DocumentRoot /www/domain
</virtualhost>
Then you create a new virtualhost that will hold all domains you want to redirect like this:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName example.com
ServerAlias foo.example.com bar.example.com others.example.com
DocumentRoot /www/redirect_folder
</virtualhost>
Inside that folder make a simple index.php page that summons the 301 so any domains hold in there will be redirect to your main domain with the 301 code.
<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.example.com" );
?>
Why do you think it is better this way ?
This way you won't have to keep updating a bunch of places everytime you have a new domain to hold and redirct to your main domain and it won't be serving your users with the current name but will actually redirect them to your main domain in question.
If you are the server owner you can make it even better, you can put the 2nd virtualhost as the first virtualhost in your httpd.conf of vhost.conf file and whenever you hit the IP of your server it will lead you to the redirection page which will lead your users to the main domain in this case instead of having to set a bunch of ServerAlias you can just create the DNS A record for that given subdomain or domain leading to your IP and the server will take care of the rest.
In this last case all you would need for your virtual host would be:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName example.com
DocumentRoot /www/redirect_folder
</virtualhost>
as you dont need the ServerAlias since every and each request that hits your server IP will go to your first vhost.
In addition if you wanted to do this using .htaccess, it would be something like this i belive:
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^foo.example.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [r=301,nc]
Best Answer
You can specify * in both directives.
NameVirtualHost only defines IP on which you'll use name virtual hosts. Doesn't contain other directives, so no reason why it should be block. On the other hand VirtualHost does contain other directives for particular virtual host, so it has to be a block.
You don't need it. See example.
Recommended reading: Apache Virtual Host documentation