LAN-Tech Network Management

I was asked; “When logging onto a remote machine, how do I know if it is a physical or virtual, server or PC” ?  Since the experience is “virtually” the same, it is not readily apparent.  There are a few ways to verify but in my opinion the simplest is to run systeminfo from a command line.  Within the output, next to “System Manufacturer” and “System Model:” it will show:

• On a VM running on Hyper-V => “Microsoft Corporation” and “Virtual Machine”
• On a VM running on VMware Server => “VMware, Inc.” and “VMware Virtual Platform”
• On a physical machine => “System Manufacturer” or the actual manufacturer, and the motherboard model number such as D945GNT (Intel)

To parse the results of systeminfo and only return the information to determine if virtual or not, run:

systeminfo |find “System Model”