Xml and More: Cloud: Find Out More about Your VM

If you can access a VM in a cloud and would like to find out more about it, here are what you can do on a Linux system.

lscpu

lscpu is a useful Linux command to uncover CPU architecture information. It can print out the following VM information:

Hypervisor vendor^[1]
Virtualization type
Cpu virtualization extension^[2]

Using two different servers (see below) as examples, we have found that:

Server #1

This is a Xen guest fully virtualized (HVM).

Server #2

This is a physical server. However, it does have the virtualization extensions in hardware.

Another way to verify it is to:^[3]

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep vmx

Server #1

$ lscpu
Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                4
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-3
Thread(s) per core:    4
Core(s) per socket:    1
Socket(s):             1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 63
Stepping:              2
CPU MHz:               2294.924
BogoMIPS:              4589.84
Hypervisor vendor:     Xen
Virtualization type:   full
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              46080K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-3

Server #2

$ lscpu

Architecture: x86_64

CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit

Byte Order: Little Endian

CPU(s): 16

On-line CPU(s) list: 0-15

Thread(s) per core: 2

Core(s) per socket: 4

CPU socket(s): 2

NUMA node(s): 2

Vendor ID: GenuineIntel

CPU family: 6

Model: 26

Stepping: 5

CPU MHz: 1600.000

BogoMIPS: 4521.27

Virtualization: VT-x

L1d cache: 32K

L1i cache: 32K

L2 cache: 256K

L3 cache: 8192K

NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-3,8-11

NUMA node1 CPU(s): 4-7,12-15

virt-what

virt-what is another useful Linux command to detect if we are running in a virtual machine. For example, Server #1 is a Xen guest fully virtualized as shown below:^[4]

$ sudo virt-what
xen
xen-hvm

If virt-what is not installed in the system, you can install it using yum (an interactive, rpm based, package manager).

To find out which package "virt-what" is in, type:

$ yum whatprovides "*/virt-what"

Loaded plugins: aliases, changelog, downloadonly, kabi, presto, refresh-

: packagekit, security, tmprepo, verify, versionlock

Loading support for kernel ABI

virt-what-1.11-1.1.el6.x86_64 : Detect if we are running in a virtual machine

Repo : installed

Matched from:

Filename : /usr/sbin/virt-what

To install the matched package, type (note that "-1.11-1.1.el6" in the middle of the full name has been removed):

# yum install virt-what.x86_64

Loaded plugins: aliases, changelog, downloadonly, kabi, presto, refresh-

              : packagekit, security, tmprepo, verify, versionlock

Loading support for kernel ABI

Setting up Install Process

Nothing to do

Finally, If nothing is printed and the "virt-what" exits with code 0 (or no error) as in Server #2, then it can mean either that the program is running on bare-metal or the program is running inside a type of virtual machine which we don't know about or cannot detect.