diff --git a/roles/kubernetes/preinstall/defaults/main.yml b/roles/kubernetes/preinstall/defaults/main.yml
index 274f62d0a..4586264a4 100644
--- a/roles/kubernetes/preinstall/defaults/main.yml
+++ b/roles/kubernetes/preinstall/defaults/main.yml
@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
 ---
 run_gitinfos: false
 
-# Skip installation of the EPEL repository
-skip_epel: false
+# Configure EPEL repository via rpm
+epel_enabled: true
 
 epel_rpm_download_url: "https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm"
 
diff --git a/roles/kubernetes/preinstall/tasks/main.yml b/roles/kubernetes/preinstall/tasks/main.yml
index b996acff8..91241f7be 100644
--- a/roles/kubernetes/preinstall/tasks/main.yml
+++ b/roles/kubernetes/preinstall/tasks/main.yml
@@ -114,7 +114,7 @@
     - ansible_distribution in ["CentOS","RedHat"]
     - not is_atomic
     - epel_rpm_download_url != ''
-    - not skip_epel
+    - epel_enabled|bool
   register: epel_task_result
   until: epel_task_result|succeeded
   retries: 4