How to Change the Hostname of a Vultr Cloud Instance

A hostname is a name that is given to a system within a network to uniquely identify it among other devices. It serves as a human-readable label that simplifies communication, troubleshooting, and management. Instead of remembering IP addresses, administrators and users can reference machines using recognizable names like web01, db-server, or node1.example.com.

Hostname are important for:

• DNS resolution
• SSH access
• Monitoring and logging

Changing the hostname is a common task when setting up new servers, applying naming conventions, or preparing systems for production environments.

Follow this guide to change the hostname on CentOS, Fedora, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, and Windows Server without reinstalling the server or losing any data.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you need to:

• Have access to a Linux server as a non-root user with sudo privileges.

Disable the Automatic Hostname Update

To make your hostname changes permanent, remove the hostname related directives from the /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg file. This prevents cloud-init from resetting the hostname on reboot.

1. Open the /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg file using an test editor.

   CONSOLE

   Copy

   $ sudo nano /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg

   Explain Code

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2. Locate the cloud_init_modules section and remove the following directives.

   - set_hostname
   - update_hostname
   - update_etc_hosts

   Save and close the file.

Conclusion

In this guide, you changed the hostname across multiple operating systems without reinstalling your server or losing data. You updated the hostname configuration on CentOS, Fedora, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, and Windows Server using system-specific tools and disabled cloud-init to prevent overwrites. These steps ensured the changes persisted across reboots and followed best practices for system administration.