Commands to Detect Type of Virtualization

Previously, we talked about how to detect how to detect whether an instance is running within a Virtualized OS instance or not. Sometime We Need to Know Type of Virtualization Cloud Server or VPS is Using. Here Are Some Commands to Detect Type of Virtualization. Need is sometimes to detect OpenVZ like container based virtualization, which essentially should cost lesser than KVM, Xen etc.

Why Type These Commands to Detect Type of Virtualization?

The reason as said – to detect OpenVZ like container based virtualization to detect the cheating of selling container based virtualization as OpenVZ like virtualization has limitations. Readers may read OpenVZ vs KVM Virtualization in this context.

List of Commands to Detect Type of Virtualization?

If we want to find out whether GNU/Linux instance is running inside a virtualized environment, there are various methods we can try, which depending on the type of hypervisor used. Processor manufacturer, files in some directories, virtualized NIC driver name, boot sequence can reveal some clues.

dmidecode

On a physical server, the above command will return the name of the hardware manufacturer and on a virtual machine running hypervisor-based virtualization, it will show the name of virtualization technology. If we run the command on Aruba Cloud, it will return :

The command can detect hypervisor-based virtualization like QEMU, Xen, VirtualBox, VMware. If command run on server running container based virtualization like Virtuozzo/OpenVZ, it will return no output. Also, we can run :

which returns this on on Aruba Cloud :

systemd

On a physical server, the above command will return none and on a virtual machine, it will show the name of virtualization technology.

virt-what

virt-what is a package usually installed, if not you can install it with command like yum install virt-what, apt install virt-what. We can detect QEMU, KVM, VMware, Hyper-V, VirtualBox, OpenVZ/Virtuozzo, Xen, LXC, Parallels, etc virtualization. If we run the command on Aruba Cloud, it will return :

dmesg

The above command will return details of the machine, it will show the name of virtualization technology. If we run the command on Aruba Cloud, it will return :

/dev/disk/by-id/

The above command will give hints of the underlying technology. If we run the command on Aruba Cloud, it will return :

open-vm-tools

imvirt

imvirt is availble as Debian package and can detect VirtualBox, VMware, QEMU/KVM (experimental), Xen (para and non-para virtualized), OpenVZ/Virtuozzo, Parallels Workstation, UML, any HVM providing CPUID 0x40000000 detection.

This is not exactly enough. There is always some way to deliberately fool these tools even if used in combination.