Easy way to determine virtualization technology

dmidecode -s system-product-name

I have tested on Vmware Workstation, VirtualBox, QEMU with KVM, standalone QEMU with Ubuntu as the guest OS. Others have added additional platforms that they're familiar with as well.

Virtualization technologies

• VMware Workstation

  root@router:~# dmidecode -s system-product-name
  VMware Virtual Platform
  

• VirtualBox

  root@router:~# dmidecode -s system-product-name
  VirtualBox
  

• Qemu with KVM

  root@router:~# dmidecode -s system-product-name
  KVM
  

• Qemu (emulated)

  root@router:~# dmidecode -s system-product-name
  Bochs
  

• Microsoft VirtualPC

  root@router:~# dmidecode | egrep -i 'manufacturer|product'
  Manufacturer: Microsoft Corporation
  Product Name: Virtual Machine
  

• Virtuozzo

  root@router:~# dmidecode
  /dev/mem: Permission denied
  

• Xen

  root@router:~# dmidecode | grep -i domU
  Product Name: HVM domU
  

On bare metal, this returns an identification of the computer or motherboard model.

/dev/disk/by-id

If you don't have the rights to run dmidecode then you can use:

Virtualization Technology: QEMU

ls -1 /dev/disk/by-id/

Output

[root@host-7-129 ~]# ls -1 /dev/disk/by-id/
ata-QEMU_DVD-ROM_QM00003
ata-QEMU_HARDDISK_QM00001
ata-QEMU_HARDDISK_QM00001-part1
ata-QEMU_HARDDISK_QM00002
ata-QEMU_HARDDISK_QM00002-part1
scsi-SATA_QEMU_HARDDISK_QM00001
scsi-SATA_QEMU_HARDDISK_QM00001-part1
scsi-SATA_QEMU_HARDDISK_QM00002
scsi-SATA_QEMU_HARDDISK_QM00002-part1

References

• How to detect virtualization at dmo.ca

If the container is running systemd:

$ systemd-detect-virt
lxc

On KVM for example it returns:

kvm

and on a non-virtualized host:

none

See also:

• systemd-detect-virt(1)
• Detecting Virtualization

Desirable method

lshw

This command produces the following output on vairous VM technology guests.

$ sudo lshw -class system

Output

• KVM

  mungr                     
      description: Computer
      product: KVM
      vendor: Red Hat
      width: 64 bits
      capabilities: smbios-2.4 dmi-2.4 vsyscall64 vsyscall32
  

• Virtual Box

  fedora17                  
      description: Computer
      product: VirtualBox ()
      vendor: innotek GmbH
      version: 1.2
      serial: 0
      width: 64 bits
      capabilities: smbios-2.5 dmi-2.5 vsyscall32
  

• VMWare

  partedmagic
      description: Computer
      product: VMware Virtual Platform ()
      vendor: VMware, Inc.
      version: None
      serial: VMware-56 4d 94 a0 53 e3 f3 c6-f9 a6 eb 1a 89 70 04 57
      width: 32 bits
      capabilities: smbios-2.4 dmi-2.4 smp-1.4 smp
  

Scripting

If you're on Ubuntu/Debian there's the package open-vm-tools can be installed. It provides vmware-checkvm. It returns only a a digit. A 0 means it's a VM, a 1 means it's a physical system.

Less desirable methods

If it's KVM the /proc/scsi/scsi and ethtool options show up as follows:

SCSI

$ cat /proc/scsi/scsi 
Attached devices:
Host: scsi1 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
  Vendor: QEMU     Model: QEMU DVD-ROM     Rev: 0.9.
  Type:   CD-ROM                           ANSI  SCSI revision: 05

ethtool

$ ethtool -i eth0
driver: virtio_net
version: 
firmware-version: 
bus-info: virtio0
supports-statistics: no
supports-test: no
supports-eeprom-access: no
supports-register-dump: no
supports-priv-flags: no

The virtio_net is part of KVM. The /proc/scsi/scsi tells you that you're in a VM, and that you're most likely KVM.

dmesg

Using the following commands grep'ing through dmesg log.

$ sudo dmesg | grep -i virtual

• VMWare

  VMware vmxnet virtual NIC driver
   Vendor: VMware    Model: Virtual disk      Rev: 1.0 
  hda: VMware Virtual IDE CDROM Drive, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
  

• QEmu or KVM

  If the "-cpu host" option has not been used, QEmu and KVM will identify themselves as:

  CPU: AMD QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.9.1 stepping 03
  

  otherwise, the host's CPU information will be used both in dmesg, or in /proc/cpuinfo. However, you should see something like:

  [    0.000000] Booting paravirtualized kernel on KVM
  

  In newer kernels that understand that they're running under paravirtualization.

• Microsoft VirtualPC

  hda: Virtual HD, ATA DISK drive
  hdc: Virtual CD, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
  

• Xen

  $ sudo dmesg | grep -i xen
  Xen virtual console successfully installed as tty1
  

• Virtuozzo

  # method #1
  $ sudo dmesg
  (returns no output)
  
  # method #2
  $ sudo cat /var/log/dmesg
  (returns no output)
  
  # method #3
  $ sudo ls -al /proc/vz
  veinfo  veinfo_redir  veredir  vestat  vzaquota  vzdata
  

References

• dmo.ca/ blog/ How to detect virtualization