VM Feature Identification

When you control your own hypervisor, you are aware of the features you are using, since you have configured the system and the VMs. However, if you are using a service provider for your hosting or cloud, you need to do some detective work to determine the hypervisor mode and features employed.

MODE DETECTION

From dmesg:

If your VM is either HVM or PVHVM, look for:

[    0.000000] Hypervisor detected: Xen HVM

If your VM is PV or PVH, look for:

[    0.000000] Booting paravirtualized kernel on Xen

REFERENCES

• A truly great article by Brendan Gregg