I've been looking for some way to find out the machine type in Linux and after much seeking I founddmidecode. It's not uncommon I get asked to "check out" a server in India or elsewhere in the world and it's always frustrating not to know what brand/model it is.
Example from a Dell PowerEdge 650 pizzabox.
[root@monitor root]# dmidecode |grep Prod
Product Name: PowerEdge 650
Product Name: 0W1373