What is the best time to set the IP address for a server? I have a server that I am going to install the OS on and then I am going to send it to a server colocation facility. The server is going to have Internet facing services (www, email, etc.) I can set up a "fake" IP address during install (by fake I mean private as in RFC 1918) and change the "fake" IPs to the real IPs once I set up the colocation service. The other option is to set up the colocation service...wait for them to give me the "real" IPs and use them during the OS install.

The ramification are that...if I use "fake" IPs during install...I will have to wait before I set up things like SSL certs. If I wait for IPs from the colocation provider...then I can set up SSL certs that use the "correct" (as in "real") IP addresses...no changes to the certs until they expire.

Do the "gotchas" of changing an IP address on a server outweigh the benefits of a quick install? The other danger with using "fake" IPs is that I could make a mistake when I go through the various files to change the IP address to the "live" IP address.

Server OS: CentOS 6.2 or CentOS 6.3, 64 bit. Apps: Apache 2.4.X httpd, MySQL 5.X (will eventually use replication)