The host does not have a suitable FQDN

Yesterday I was having a minor issue joining a newly setup ESXi 4.1 host to our AD domain.  The ESXi host was added and managed by vCenter.  Using vSphere Client, I was connected to the vCenter and tried to join the ESXi host to the AD domain but failed with the following error.

Join Windows Domain
esxi01.vmdomain.org
The host does not have a suitable FQDN.
VMDOMAIN\Administrator
VMVC.vmdomain.org

I verified that the host name can be resolved by DNS and there is firewall blocking any port.  I also make sure that the NTP service was properly setup and the time was correct.  I also confirmed that it was not due to the issue of not recognizing down level logon name as mentioned in my previous entry http://deinfotech.blogspot.sg/2011/10/error-joining-esxi-to-windows-domain.html.

What I missed out was the settings on the host itself.  I connected to the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) and entered the following three missing settings.

IP Address of the DNS Server

Host name

DNS suffix

After the missing settings had been entered and the management network restarted, I was able to join the ESXi host to the AD domain.

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