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

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?

Solution 1:

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

Solution 2:

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.

Solution 3:

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