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Having access to an VPS, i need to know which type of virtualization it is running from the terminal.

How can determine the virtualization platform that my VM is running on? (OpenVZ, Xen, KVM, etc?)

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  • I've only used KVM - I'd hope that the others are similar - Assuming you are using Linux, in KVM you can just look through the bootlog for a line like "Booting paravirtulized kernel on KVM". Commented May 16, 2014 at 6:09
  • In my case all boot logs are empty... and dmesg dosen't show any output. =/ Commented May 16, 2014 at 6:17

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
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hostnamectl is your friend (requires systemd).

A few examples:

Laptop without any virtualization

$ hostnamectl status Static hostname: earth.gangs.net Icon name: computer-laptop Chassis: laptop Machine ID: 18a0752e1ccbeef09da51ad17fab1f1b Boot ID: beefdc99969e4a4a8525ff842b383c62 Operating System: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS Kernel: Linux 4.4.0-66-generic Architecture: x86-64

Xen

$ hostnamectl status Static hostname: pluto.gangs.net Icon name: computer-vm Chassis: vm Machine ID: beef39aebbf8ba220ed0438b54497609 Boot ID: beefc71e97ed48dbb436a470fe1920e1 Virtualization: xen Operating System: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS Kernel: Linux 3.13.0-37-generic Architecture: x86-64

OpenVZ

$ hostnamectl status Static hostname: mars.gangs.net Icon name: computer-container Chassis: container Machine ID: 55296cb0566a4aaca10b8e3a4b28beef Boot ID: 1bb259b0eb064d9eb8a22d112211beef Virtualization: openvz Operating System: CentOS Linux 7 (Core) CPE OS Name: cpe:/o:centos:centos:7 Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-042stab120.16 Architecture: x86-64

KVM

$ hostnamectl status Static hostname: mercury.gangs.net Icon name: computer-vm Chassis: vm Machine ID: beeffefc50ae499881b024c25895ec86 Boot ID: beef9c7662a240b3b3b04cef3d1518f0 Virtualization: kvm Operating System: CentOS Linux 7 (Core) CPE OS Name: cpe:/o:centos:centos:7 Kernel: Linux 3.10.0-514.10.2.el7.x86_64 Architecture: x86-64
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    I just get Failed to create bus connection: No such file or directory Commented Nov 26, 2019 at 15:19
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Unless the VM host is lying to you it can generally be figured out by inspecting the "hardware" the VM guest is seeing.

Easiest is probably to use a program like virt-what, which will do the parsing for you. Here I'm blindly assuming that you are running some kind of Linux based distribution by the way.

Might also be worth taking a look at puppet's facter, which too uses similar techniques to determine in what kind of VM environment it's running.

Or you could you ask whoever you happen to be renting the VPS from? :-)

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    virt-what worked to me. Thanks for the answer. Commented May 16, 2014 at 13:11
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    I looked at facter. It calls virt-what! Commented Aug 3, 2015 at 16:38
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Use the virt-what command to determine the type of virtualization technology the system is using.

See: http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-what/

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Systemd includes systemd-detect-virt

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Debian comes with this small package for detecting virtualisation type:

$ sudo apt-get install virt-what $ virt-what

and little bigger because of Perl dependencies: 

$ sudo apt-get install imvirt $ imvirt
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You can also use dmidecode which will show you system hardware info and other.

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  • dmidecode is empty for my VPS. lshw is mostly empty. virt-what shown openvz )) Commented Aug 2, 2015 at 9:06

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