Re: [Xen-users] Best way to differentiate between virtual servers and non-virtual servers

[jinho hwang <hwang.jinho@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 10:43 AM, Simon Hobson <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

jinho hwang wrote:

As the perspective of the infrastructure manager, not a user, knowing a machine is a virtual machine or a physical machine helps how to manage the machine.

Right, so after all that, you are talking about how you - as the administrator of a machine - determine if it's bare metal (non virtualised) system, or a virtualised system, or is a host for virtualised machines.

I don't know about other virtualisation technologies, but with Xen you just need to look at what's installed.

If the hypervisor is installed, and there's a /proc/xen directory with stuff in it, and Xen commands (eg "xm list") do stuff - then you'll know that this is a host system running under Xen.

If there's no Xen stuff installed, and no /proc/xen directory - then you're likely running on bare metal.


However, you really should not be having to do this. You should **KNOW** without having to go looking around on a machine what it is. If you are working on machines, and your management systems (even just a basic list of what you have or are responsible for) does not give you this information then you need to address that.

Traditionally people would keep "some sort of list" which would say "what is it", "where is it", and "what's the admin/root password". These days that should also include "is it a virtual host or client" - and have an easy way to find out "what virtual machines does this host" or "where is this hosted" depending on whether it's a host or guest.

--
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Sorry for the top-posting.

simon hobson wrote:
If the hypervisor is installed, and there's a /proc/xen directory with 
stuff in it, and Xen commands (eg "xm list") do stuff - then you'll know
 that this is a host system running under Xen.

If there's no Xen stuff installed, and no /proc/xen directory - then you're likely running on bare metal.

I agree with Xen that I can have information from /proc/xen for both virtual machine and domain0. 

simon hobson wrote:
However, you really should not be having to do this. You should **KNOW**
 without having to go looking around on a machine what it is. If you are
 working on machines, and your management systems (even just a basic 
list of what you have or are responsible for) does not give you this 
information then you need to address that.

Traditionally people would keep "some sort of list" which would say 
"what is it", "where is it", and "what's the admin/root password". These
 days that should also include "is it a virtual host or client" - and 
have an easy way to find out "what virtual machines does this host" or 
"where is this hosted" depending on whether it's a host or guest.

However, think about this case. I want to distribute a client software to my customers and they can install wherever they want to control from the management server. While customers install the client, they may insert a wrong information. Later, it will bring a big trouble when the manager thinks he reboots a virtual machine, but actually he reboots a physical machine which has lots of virtual machines on it. I can not trust customers' setting. I need to make sure that the machine is a virtual machine or not. 

Thanks for your consideration. 

Jinho
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