Report this

What is the reason for this report?

What is the Droplet Hostname?

Posted on August 31, 2013

When creating a droplet, you have to fill in a “Hostname”. I’m a newbie and curious what it’s used for and what it is. Is it just what separates each droplet from each other or is it much more then that? Isn’t the hostname supposed to be “Localhost”? I’m really confused!



This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.

A droplet/server’s hostname is basically its name. You can name it anything you want, such as your domain name or the name of a Greek god ;) <br> <br>Your IP’s PTR/rDNS record is set to your droplet’s hostname so if you’re going to run a mailserver you have to set it to your FQDN.

can I use the same hostname for different droplets?

For me, the public IP was the hostname. I used it to find the “host” “hash” with: ssh-keygen -H -F <my.ip.was.here>

The developer cloud

Scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.

Get started for free

Sign up and get $200 in credit for your first 60 days with DigitalOcean.*

*This promotional offer applies to new accounts only.