Do VM's need an anti virus

[GreenIT]

If the host machine is running windows server 2003 and Symantec, do the VM's need seperate symantec antivirus?

Thanks

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Your post has been moved to the Security and Compliance forum

Dave Mishchenko

VMware Communities User Moderator

[weinstein5]

Ye sthey do - each VM whether running in ESX, VMware Server, or Worksastion should have some form of anti-virus protection particulalry if oging to be used for any production - anti-virus installed into the host machine will not protect the VM

[AWo]

Yes, a virtualized machine faces the same threads as a physical one regarding viruses.

At VMworld 2007 was an announcement to put the virus protection onto ESX host to protect all guests.

AWo

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Unfortunately until a VMsafe Antivirus product is available, you need to run AV in every guest. If you run it on the host you will get major performance issues as well as a ton of false positives. Also you want to stagger your full disk scans so that they do not run simultaneously across your VMs else that will also cause severe performance problems.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[TomHowarth]

yes, a VM is to all respects and purposes the same as a phyiscal machine. you would not leave unprotected phyiscal machines on the network, just because you had install AV on a machine. these machines should be treated as you would a physical one. however remember to stagger your AV scans as these are very CPU intensive and could bring your host to its knees if not carefully managed.

Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator

[williamarrata]

TrendMicro and Symantic have very good products that work very well with ESX and VM machines. Take a look and do your due diligence to see what product might fit you best.

Hope that helped.

[azn2kew]

You can also use ClamAV as your antivirus solution read here more details

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant