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