How To Identify If Underlying Disk is HDD or SSD?

Problem

How to identify if the underlying disk on the system is HDD or SSD?

Environment

• Platform9 Managed OpenStack - All Versions
• Platform9 Managed Kubernetes - All Versions
• CentOS
• Ubuntu

Procedure

1. Use thelsblk command to identify the type of disk attached to the server. In ROTA column the output '1' indicates the type of disk is HDD, for the SSD the value will be '0'.

Bash

# lsblk -o NAME,ROTA
NAME                                                                   ROTA
sda                                                                       0
├─sda1                                                                    0
├─sda2                                                                    0
│ └─md126                                                                 0
└─sda3                                                                    0
 └─md125                                                                  0
sdb                                                                       0
├─sdb1                                                                    0
├─sdb2                                                                    0
│ └─md126                                                                 0
└─sdb3                                                                    0
 └─md125                                                                  0
sdc                                                                       1
└─360000000000000000e00000000010001                                       1
sdd                                                                       1
sde                                                                       1

1. It can be also identified using the file rotational file in sys filesystem as below to confirm if the disk is hdd or ssd.

Bash

# cat /sys/block/<sda/vda>/queue/rotational

Additional Information

On a KVM guest virtual machine, the drive letter would be vda. The result will vary depend on the bus type selected during the virtual machine creation