Summary

Inventory device records for devices where a known hypervisor has been found to be enabled are given a type of "VM Host".

Examples of hypervisors which can be identified based on data gathered by the FlexNet Inventory Agent or beacon virtual inventory gathering processes include:

• Microsoft Hyper-V
• Linux KVM
• VMware ESXi

Note that the inventory device type is not generally a strong indicator of whether a device is used as a server or a workstation. In particular, hypervisors commonly run on both servers and workstations, so a device having a type of "VM Host" is not a strong indicator on its own of what type of workload the device supports.

Detection and inventory content related to common hypervisors

VMware ESXi

VMware ESXi hypervisors are identified by VMware virtual inventory gathering tasks performed by beacons.

When ESXi has been detected on a device, the generated inventory NDI file contains an entry like the following:

<Hardware Class="VMWARE_ESXComputerSystem" Name="host-13" Evidence="VISDK">

Hyper-V

The FlexNet Inventory Agent detects Hyper-V on devices running Windows operating systems by querying various data from the following Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) namespace: root\virtualization or root\virtualization\v2

When Hyper-V has been detected on a device, the generated inventory NDI file contains an entry like the following:

<Hardware Class="MGSVM_InfrastructureSDK" Name="Microsoft Hyper-V" Evidence="HYPERV">

Linux KVM

When Linux KVM is enabled on a device, the generated inventory NDI file contains entries like the following:

<Hardware Class="MGSVM_InfrastructureSDK" Name="Linux KVM" Evidence="KVM">
    <Property Name="Name" Value="Linux KVM"/>
    <Property Name="Protocol" Value="libvirt"/>
    <Property Name="Version" Value="3001000"/>
    <Property Name="LibVersion" Value="5007000"/>
    <Property Name="HostIdentifier" Value="myhost.acme.com"/>
</Hardware>

Related details

The following idea on the Flexera Ideas site is tracking a suggestion to change behavior related to the handling of devices where Hyper-V is enabled:

FNMS-I-355: Classifying user workstations as Computer instead of VM Host even if they have Hyper-V role enabled 

Please consider voting for this idea to help the Flexera Product Managers assess the level of interest there is in having it implemented if this is of interest to you.