Okay, the above failure at "TASK [Clean /etc/hosts on the host]" seems to have been due to the fact I hadn't emptied the shared NFS storage after the last attempt. After fresh-installing node and emptying (rm -rf *), it proceeded a few steps further to: [ INFO ] TASK [Clean /etc/hosts on the host] [ INFO ] changed: [localhost] [ INFO ] TASK [Add an entry in /etc/hosts for the target VM] [ INFO ] skipping: [localhost] [ INFO ] TASK [Start ovirt-ha-broker service on the host] [ INFO ] changed: [localhost] [ INFO ] TASK [Initialize lockspace volume] [ INFO ] changed: [localhost] [ INFO ] TASK [Start ovirt-ha-agent service on the host] [ INFO ] changed: [localhost] [ INFO ] TASK [Check engine VM health] Then hung. Eventually I killed it by pressing ctrl-C. Ran the usual install again (hosted-engine --deploy --config-append=/var/lib/ovirt-hosted-engine-setup/answers/answers.conf) in case of anomaly. This time only got as far as: [ INFO ] TASK [Create local VM] [ ERROR ] fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": true, "cmd": ["virt-install", "-n", "HostedEngineLocal", "--os-variant", "rhel7", "--virt-type", "kvm", "--memory", "16384", "--vcpus", "4", "--network", "network=default,mac=00:16:3e:0a:91:2c,model=virtio", "--disk", "/var/tmp/localvmhRtN_6/images/65f7f081-4d9e-43ae-926f-25807f075f1d/a0a00e73-d3ea-4b9b-bd26-06fe189931f2", "--import", "--disk", "path=/var/tmp/localvmhRtN_6/seed.iso,device=cdrom", "--noautoconsole", "--rng", "/dev/random", "--graphics", "vnc", "--video", "vga", "--sound", "none", "--controller", "usb,model=none", "--memballoon", "none", "--boot", "hd,menu=off", "--clock", "kvmclock_present=yes"], "delta": "0:00:00.512265", "end": "2018-10-08 00:33:59.632317", "msg": "non-zero return code", "rc": 1, "start": "2018-10-08 00:33:59.120052", "stderr": "ERROR The MAC address '00:16:3e:0a:91:2c' is in use by another virtual machine.\nDomain installation does not appear to have been successful.\nIf it was, you can restar t your domain by running:\n virsh --connect qemu:///system start HostedEngineLocal\notherwise, please restart your installation.", "stderr_lines": ["ERROR The MAC address '00:16:3e:0a:91:2c' is in use by another virtual machine.", "Domain installation does not appear to have been successful.", "If it was, you can restart your domain by running:", " virsh --connect qemu:///system start HostedEngineLocal", "otherwise, please restart your installation."], "stdout": "\nStarting install...", "stdout_lines": ["", "Starting install..."]}