diff --git a/conf/zeppelin-env.sh.template b/conf/zeppelin-env.sh.template
index d8e265ae93c..9f10be83c84 100644
--- a/conf/zeppelin-env.sh.template
+++ b/conf/zeppelin-env.sh.template
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
 
 # export JAVA_HOME=
 # export MASTER=                 		# Spark master url. eg. spark://master_addr:7077. Leave empty if you want to use local mode.
+# export ZEPPELIN_LOCAL_IP              # Zeppelin's thrift server ip address, if not specified, one random IP address will be choosen.
 # export ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS      		# Additional jvm options. for example, export ZEPPELIN_JAVA_OPTS="-Dspark.executor.memory=8g -Dspark.cores.max=16"
 # export ZEPPELIN_MEM            		# Zeppelin jvm mem options Default -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m
 # export ZEPPELIN_INTP_MEM       		# zeppelin interpreter process jvm mem options. Default -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m
diff --git a/zeppelin-interpreter/src/main/java/org/apache/zeppelin/interpreter/remote/RemoteInterpreterUtils.java b/zeppelin-interpreter/src/main/java/org/apache/zeppelin/interpreter/remote/RemoteInterpreterUtils.java
index 7e9ff13cadc..4ebc2a2d012 100644
--- a/zeppelin-interpreter/src/main/java/org/apache/zeppelin/interpreter/remote/RemoteInterpreterUtils.java
+++ b/zeppelin-interpreter/src/main/java/org/apache/zeppelin/interpreter/remote/RemoteInterpreterUtils.java
@@ -94,6 +94,11 @@ public static TServerSocket createTServerSocket(String portRange)
   }
 
   public static String findAvailableHostAddress() throws UnknownHostException, SocketException {
+    String zeppelinServerIP = System.getenv("ZEPPELIN_LOCAL_IP");
+    if (zeppelinServerIP != null) {
+      return zeppelinServerIP;
+    }
+
     InetAddress address = InetAddress.getLocalHost();
     if (address.isLoopbackAddress()) {
       for (NetworkInterface networkInterface : Collections