Virtualization technology is becoming more and more popular as it offers a way to run multiple applications on the same computer. However, there are a few things you can do to make sure your processor supports virtualization technology. First, check the BIOS for support. BIOSes are typically found on motherboards and are responsible for setting up the computer’s hardware and software. If your processor supports virtualization technology, then it should be able to support virtualization technologies. Next, check the processor’s documentation. Processor documentation can be found online or in printed form. If your processor supports virtualization technology, then you should find documentation that explains how to enable virtualization on your system. Finally, make sure that you have updated your drivers for your processor and operating system. Drivers are important because they allow the computer to function as expected and allow you to use specific applications and features of the operating system. If you have not updated your drivers for at least six months, then you may need to update them.
It’s quite simple: We’ll need to take a peek inside the /proc/cpuinfo file and look at the flags section for one of two values, vmx or svm.
vmx – (intel) svm – (amd)
You can use grep to quickly see if either value exists in the file by running the following command:
If your system supports VT, then you’ll see vmx or svm in the list of flags. My system has two processors, so there are two separate sections:
VT technology can still be disabled in your computer’s BIOS, however, so you’ll want to check there to make sure that it hasn’t been disabled. The flags in cpuinfo simply mean that your processor supports it.
From my research, VT is required in order to run 64-bit guests under the free VMware server for linux… so it would logically follow that if you can do so, VT is enabled.
32-bit VT is not enabled by default under VMware server. If you want to enable it, you need to add the following line to your *.vmx file for your virtual machine:
VMware does not recommend that you use VT for 32-bit guests, because they say it will actually hurt performance.
