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mr-euro
Asked: 2009-10-27 06:56:24 +0800 CST

Renting a dedicated, but getting a VPS. How to detect? [duplicate]

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When renting a dedicated server, how can one be certain than he/she is not getting a VPS or some other virtual machine variant instead of a true dedicated hardware box?

Which checks can be run (assuming it is a linux box) to detect such case?

vps

5 Answers

  1. There's no 100% reliable way for you to detect that you're in a VM, just like there's no way to detect whether you're actually in the Matrix, or if you're actually a computer simulation.

    However, if the provider is an idiot, you can tell that you're in a VM from the following handy list:

    • Xen: /proc/sys/xen exists
    • OpenVZ/Virtuozzo: /proc/vz exists
    • VMWare: Look for a VMWare video card in the output of lspci
    • Linux VServer: /proc/self/status has an s_context or VxID field
    • Solaris Zone: /sbin/zonename exists

    These aren't 100% reliable, because the provider controls the environment and can modify the system to not show these. However, anyone who is cheap enough to sell you a dedicated server and give you a VM probably isn't smart enough to be able to pull this off.

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  2. Best Answer

    First of all, physical machines tend to have more memory than VPSs. Question 512MB or less. Secondly you can check several things to find a VPS. You'll commonly find virtual machines have surprisingly basic looking hardware in them. Like KVM has a "Cirrus Logic GD 5446" graphics card. VMWare used to have an RTL8129 network card in. This is so most OS installation media has drivers for the virtual devices.

    The facter (part of Puppet) virtual.rb script has several useful techniques for finding out what type of machine you're running.

    OpenVZ

    Look for /proc/vz/veinfo

    Xen

    Look for one of /proc/sys/xen, /sys/bus/xen or /proc/xen

    vserver

    Look for s_context or VxID in /proc/self/status

    VMWare or Parallels

    • Run lspci and look for VMWare VGA adapter
    • Run dmidecode and look for mention of VMWare or Parallels

    KVM

    Run lspci and look for RAM memory: Qumranet, Inc. Virtio memory balloon

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  3. Take a look at your machine's MAC address(es). Do you see any VM-specific OUIs?

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  4. If you want to take a more hands-on approach, you can try this answer from elsewhere. Unfortunately, it does require a functional compiler on the "guest" system.

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  5. Try and set up a VM environment. It should fail if it is inside a VM.

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