How to confirm I'm on a VMWare powered VPS?

Question

I chose a new VPS host partially based on their use of VMware.

I have no reason to doubt that is the case, but would like to know if there is a way I can very the virtuilization platform from inside my CentOS based VPS.

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 06 '12 at 16:33

4

use dmidecode to extract info directly from the BIOS. VMWare has it's own unique bios string.

dmidecode --type BIOS

answered Jan 06 '12 at 16:33

TheCompWiz

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This doesn't seem to work on my ESXi 5 systems which report a Phoenix BIOS – user9517 Jan 06 '12 at 16:42
Try `--type 1` to get system info... or no parameters to get the full list. – TheCompWiz Jan 06 '12 at 16:57
2

Something like this would work too: dmidecode -s system-manufacturer – Mattias Ahnberg Jan 06 '12 at 16:59

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 06 '12 at 16:35

2

You will probably see some "VMWare" branded devices listed in the output of dmesg if dmidecode somehow is not available.

answered Jan 06 '12 at 16:35

Tim

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 06 '12 at 16:54

Install a tool like lshw to check.

Manual page at: http://linux.die.net/man/1/lshw
Download RPM at: http://pkgs.repoforge.org/lshw/

Example output:

centos5
    description: Computer
    product: VMware Virtual Platform ()
    vendor: VMware, Inc.
    version: None
    serial: VMware-56 4d 55 7b ca 7f 48 a4-be da c1 22 9b 5d f8 bf
    width: 64 bits
    capabilities: smbios-2.4 dmi-2.4 vsyscall64 vsyscall32
 [...]

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 06 '12 at 16:36

0

If they install VMware tools on the client there will be some way of recognising it, for example, the presence of vmware-uninstall-tools.pl or the VMwareTools rpm.

Failing that, you could also try installing VMware tools and see what happens...

answered Jan 06 '12 at 16:36

dunxd

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How to confirm I'm on a VMWare powered VPS?

4 Answers4