I ordered a dedicated server 1 month ago and I want to make sure my server is dedicated and not a VPS or Shared server. Are there any tools I can verify that my server is running on bare metal and that I am the only user?
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First, you should trust your hosting provider. If you think they sold you a VPS, maybe you should reconsider this provider. Just to make sure you have a dedicated you can try this:
Does the command esxtop work ?
This tool is used to check performances on Virtual Machines
Check the network interfaces.
Run the command ifconfig. If you see something like this:
venet0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
inet addr:127.0.0.1 P-t-P:127.0.0.1 Bcast:0.0.0.0 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP BROADCAST POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:99999 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:99999 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:126223307 (120.3 MiB) TX bytes:2897538 (2.7 MiB)
venet0:0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
inet addr:6x.xxx.xxx.xxx P-t-P:6x.xxx.xxx.xxx Bcast:6x.xxx.xxx.xxx Mask:255.255.255.255
UP BROADCAST POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MTU:1400 Metric:1
you are probably have a VPS since venet0 is telling that this server is being an OpenVZ VPS. Note: This is not 100% fool proof, some VPS like Xen have an eth0.
Check devices/system:
Run lspci and dmesg as root. If you see something like:
VMWare SVGA device
acd0: CDROM <VMware Virtual IDE CDROM Drive/00000001> at ata0-master UDMA33
da0: <VMware Virtual disk 1.0> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-2 device
Then you are using a VPS.
Check if some files exists:
If it's a VPS running OpenVZ they'd have a file called /proc/user_beancounters. View http://wiki.openvz.org/Proc/user_beancounters for more details.
Look if /proc/vz or /proc/vz/veinfo exists (for OpenVZ) or /proc/sys/xen, /sys/bus/xen or /proc/xen (for Xen)
Check if /proc/self/status has an s_context or VxID field.
If one of these file exists, then you have a VPS.
IP lookup:
You could do a reverse IP lookup to check to see if any other websites are hosted on the same IP.
Check Memory:
Run lspci and look for RAM memory: Qumranet, Inc. Virtio memory balloon. Then you have a VPS.
Book Of Zeus
- 1,341
19
To augment @Book Of Zeus' answer, if you are running under KVM you will see things like:
root# grep 'model name' /proc/cpuinfo
model name : QEMU Virtual CPU version 0.15.0
root@nscache1a:~# dmidecode -t system | grep Manufac
Manufacturer: Bochs
root# grep QEMU /proc/scsi/scsi
Vendor: ATA Model: QEMU HARDDISK Rev: 0.15
Vendor: QEMU Model: QEMU DVD-ROM Rev: 0.15
And under XenCenter:
root# dmidecode -t system | grep -e Manu -e Prod
Manufacturer: Xen
Product Name: HVM domU
Sean Reifschneider
- 10,990
4
You may just want to execute the command dmidecode -t system and check the output of the "Manufacturer" which will give you an idea about the machine you are working on.
bintut
- 339
-1
Enter the command "df -h". If you see a virtual file system type, then that indicates you're on a virtual machine. For eg. "vzfs" is the Virtuozzo file system virtualization technology developed by Parallels, Inc.
What I see on my virtual private server:
# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vzfs 40G 3.7G 37G 10% /
none 512M 4.0K 512M 1% /dev
Keith
- 1
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To confirm that your server is running on dedicated hardware, you can use command-line tools. Check the processor information with commands like "lscpu" or "cat /proc/cpuinfo" to see if it reflects the dedicated specifications you ordered. Additionally, inspect memory details using "free -h" and disk information with "df -h" to ensure resources align with a dedicated server. Lastly, review the server logs and hosting provider documentation for any indications of virtualization or shared environments, ensuring you are the sole user on the server.
