Bill,
3 things that have given me trouble in the past...ymmv!
1) Static IP for the hosted engine, multiple times, I've tried dhcp with no luck
2) Size of thick brick for hosted engine must be 60GB or more, I've tried 50gb
mulitple times & it always fails.
3) Hosted engine & admin portal passwords, make them very simple, complex passwords
with special characters ...always failed