I'ved added a record to the DNS server here: ovirt-engine.example.com 10.0.0.109 This IP address is on the physical network that the host is on (host is on 10.0.0.171). I trust this is correct and I should not resolve to a natted IP instead. I notice that regardless of this record, the name ovirt-engine.example.com resolves to a natted IP: 192.168.124.51 because the ansible script adds an entry to /etc/hosts: 192.168.124.51 ovirt-engine.example.com While the script is running, if I I can successfully ping ovirt-engine.example.com, it responds on 192.168.124.51. So as you say: "host can correctly resolve the name of the engine VM", but it's not the DNS record's IP. If I remove the DNS record and run hosted-engine --deploy, I get error: [ ERROR ] Host name is not valid: ovirt-engine.example.com did not resolve into an IP address Anyway, I added back the DNS record and ran hosted-engine --deploy command, it failed at: [ INFO ] TASK [Clean /etc/hosts on the host] [ ERROR ] fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"msg": "The task includes an option with an undefined variable. The error was: list object has no element 0\n\nThe error appears to have been in '/usr/share/ovirt-hosted-engine-setup/ansible/create_target_vm.yml': line 396, column 5, but may\nbe elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.\n\nThe offending line appears to be:\n\n changed_when: True\n - name: Clean /etc/hosts on the host\n ^ here\n"} To debug, I added tasks to create_target_vm.yml that output the values of local_vm_ip.std_out_lines[0] and FQDN that are used in this task, then ran the usual deploy command again. They are both localhost: [ INFO ] TASK [show local_vm_ip.std_out_lines[0] that will be written to etc hosts] [ INFO ] ok: [localhost] [ INFO ] TASK [show FQDN] [ INFO ] ok: [localhost] This time, it gets past [Clean /etc/hosts on the host], but hangs at [ INFO ] TASK [Check engine VM health] same as before. I catted /etc/hosts while it was hanging and it contains: 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4 ::1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6 The ovirt-engine.example.com has been deleted! I pinged ovirt-engine.example.com and it now resolves to its IP on the physical network: 10.0.0.109. So I added back this /etc/hosts entry: 192.168.124.51 ovirt-engine.example.com It subsequently errored: [ ERROR ] fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"attempts": 120, "changed": true, "cmd": ["hosted-engine", "--vm-status", "--json"], "delta": "0:00:00.167559", "end": "2018-10-09 15:43:41.947274", "rc": 0, "start": "2018-10-09 15:43:41.779715", "stderr": "", "stderr_lines": [], "stdout": "{\"1\": {\"conf_on_shared_storage\": true, \"live-data\": true, \"extra\": \"metadata_parse_version=1\\nmetadata_feature_version=1\\ntimestamp=6810 (Tue Oct 9 15:43:36 2018)\\nhost-id=1\\nscore=3400\\nvm_conf_refresh_time=6810 (Tue Oct 9 15:43:37 2018)\\nconf_on_shared_storage=True\\nmaintenance=False\\nstate=EngineStarting\\nstopped=False\\n\", \"hostname\": \"host\", \"host-id\": 1, \"engine-status\": {\"reason\": \"failed liveliness check\", \"health\": \"bad\", \"vm\": \"up\", \"detail\": \"Up\"}, \"score\": 3400, \"stopped\": false, \"maintenance\": false, \"crc32\": \"c5d76f8b\", \"local_conf_timestamp\": 6810, \"host-ts\": 6810}, \"global_maintenance\": false}", "stdout_lines": ["{\"1\": {\"conf_ on_shared_storage\": true, \"live-data\": true, \"extra\": \"metadata_parse_version=1\\nmetadata_feature_version=1\\ntimestamp=6810 (Tue Oct 9 15:43:36 2018)\\nhost-id=1\\nscore=3400\\nvm_conf_refresh_time=6810 (Tue Oct 9 15:43:37 2018)\\nconf_on_shared_storage=True\\nmaintenance=False\\nstate=EngineStarting\\nstopped=False\\n\", \"hostname\": \"host\", \"host-id\": 1, \"engine-status\": {\"reason\": \"failed liveliness check\", \"health\": \"bad\", \"vm\": \"up\", \"detail\": \"Up\"}, \"score\": 3400, \"stopped\": false, \"maintenance\": false, \"crc32\": \"c5d76f8b\", \"local_conf_timestamp\": 6810, \"host-ts\": 6810}, \"global_maintenance\": false}"]} How can I check the hosted-engine's IP address to ensure name resolution is correct?