Maybe this is considered a preinstallation step, but the very first thing to do is set the system time on the hardware, before you even boot the OS for the firs

Maybe this is considered a preinstallation step, but the very first thing to do is set the system time on the hardware, before you even boot the OS for the first time. Then the first step after booting is to confirm the time and reset it, if necessary. This is essential for accurate and usable logs, file times, version control timestamps, etc. It's also a good idea to ensure that sshd has fresh keys that are unique to that machine. Hopefully, your images are installed without sshd keys, otherwise you'll have multiple servers with the exact same keys, which is considered bad practice. During initial configuration before deployment, you might want to remove the keys so that sshd will create fresh ones when it starts: rm -rf /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*