how to find if a host is a physical server or a virtual server

Question

I am actually trying to find if a given host is a physical server or a virtual machine. I searched on Google but couldn't find any commands or tools. Can anyone here let me know is there is any utility which can tell me if its a physical server or a virtual server.

Um...the hardware would tell you. – Nathan C Jul 19 '13 at 11:55 — Nathan C, Jul 19 '13 at 11:55
For what operating system? – Michael Hampton Jul 19 '13 at 18:37 — Michael Hampton, Jul 19 '13 at 18:37

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 19 '13 at 11:59

3

dmidecode can help you:

dennis@seahawk:~$ sudo dmidecode -s system-manufacturer
Dell Inc.
dennis@mirage:~$ sudo dmidecode -s system-manufacturer
Red Hat

The second one is a KVM instance. You can detect vmware/xen etc. this way too.

answered Jul 19 '13 at 11:59

Dennis Kaarsemaker

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 19 '13 at 11:59

On windows platforms we run the CPUID program from here http://www.cpuid.com/

The Motherboard is shown as "Intel Corporation 440BX Desktop Reference Platform"

DMI Baseboard       
vendor          Intel Corporation
model           440BX Desktop Reference Platform

how to find if a host is a physical server or a virtual server

2 Answers2