HowTo Determine If Hardware Virtualization Is Enabled

• On an Intel (Intel VT-x) system, check "/proc/cpuinfo" for the existence of the flag: "vmx"

[root@vortex ~]# cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 'vmx'

[root@vortex ~]# cat /proc/cpuinfo |grep -m 1 vmx
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse
sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology tsc_reliable nonstop_tsc
pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi
flexpriority ept vpid
[root@vortex ~]#

• On an AMD (AMD-V) system, check "/proc/cpuinfo" for the existence of the flag: "svm"

[root@cirrus ~]# cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 'svm'

flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht
syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nonstop_tsc extd_apicid pni monitor
cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy <u>svm</u> extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt
[root@cirrus ~]#