3. Prepare the Environment

Ensure you use the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) for all the host machines. If you are deploying on EC2, use the Internal hostname.

	Note
	Only alphanumeric, hyphen ("-"), and period (“.”) characters are allowed in a valid FQDN. For more details, see: Fully qualified domain name.

All the host machines in your cluster must be configured for DNS and Reverse DNS.

	Note
	If you are unable to configure DNS and Reverse DNS, you must edit the hosts file on every host in your cluster to contain each of your hosts.

Ensure that the Network Time Protocol (NTP) is enabled for your cluster.

In environments with no access to the Internet, ensure that you make one of your master nodes as NTP server.