diff --git a/perl-xCAT/xCAT/Schema.pm b/perl-xCAT/xCAT/Schema.pm
index c00449f83..ffaac1649 100644
--- a/perl-xCAT/xCAT/Schema.pm
+++ b/perl-xCAT/xCAT/Schema.pm
@@ -323,10 +323,10 @@ deps => {
 hosts => {
     cols => [qw(node ip hostnames otherinterfaces comments disable)],
     keys => [qw(node)],
-    table_desc => 'IP address and hostnames of nodes.  This info can be used to populate /etc/hosts or DNS.',
+    table_desc => 'IP addresses and hostnames of nodes.  This info is optional and is only used to populate /etc/hosts and DNS via makehosts and makedns.  Using regular expressions in this table can be a quick way to populate /etc/hosts.',
  descriptions => {
   node => 'The node name or group name.',
-  ip => 'The IP address of the node.',
+  ip => 'The IP address of the node. This is only used in makehosts.  The rest of xCAT uses system name resolution to resolve node names to IP addresses.',
   hostnames => 'Hostname aliases added to /etc/hosts for this node.',
   otherinterfaces => 'Other IP addresses to add for this node.  Format: -<ext>:<ip>,<intfhostname>:<ip>,...',
      comments => 'Any user-written notes.',