How to know if a machine is an Google Compute Engine instance

Question

Is there a way to know from a command line shell if I am currently on a Google Compute Engine machine or somewhere else (development machine)?

Answer 1

Here is python implementation via socket.getaddrinfo

import socket


def is_gce_instance():
  """Check if it's GCE instance via DNS lookup to metadata server.
  """
  try:
    socket.getaddrinfo('metadata.google.internal', 80)
  except socket.gaierror:
    return False
  return True