SQL Server Performance Forum – Threads Archive
Antivirus
This will probably get a lot of greef but is it a good idea to exclude the SQL server service from the antivirus softwareI don’t like having AV running on my SQL Servers at all.
Personally, I never run anti-virus directly on any production SQL Server. Instead, I install antivirus on another server, then have that other server do a daily scan of all my SQL Servers remotely. I also schedule these scans to run during slow times of the day to reduce their impact. Running an antivirus package on a production SQL Server, turned on to scan all activity, is a heavy performance burden. ——————————–
Brad M. McGehee, SQL Server MVP
http://www.sqlbrad.com
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/bkelley/sqlserversecuritydealingwithantivirusprograms.asp & KBAhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/309422 in addition what has been referred, IMHO I do follow what Tom & BRad said. Satya SKJ
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Writer, Contributing Editor & Moderator
http://www.SQL-Server-Performance.Com
This posting is provided AS IS with no rights for the sake of knowledge sharing. The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.
Thanks for the links.
I’m no DBA but am defacto-DBA being in a 1 man shop.
The DB has been grinding lately, trying to determine why. Also; the web service (same box) has halted a few times a in the last few weeks – and is very slow periodically.
Last night I rebooted it (it seems to clear things up if I reboot). Today, looking at task manager, RTSCAN (Symantec) has 3.9 million reads, and climbing fast. 2nd busiest is SERVER.EXE with .4 million. Not too many writes or CPU time taken, but this has GOT to be causing grief for the server. It shouldn’t be doing a scan (scheduled for Friday nights), and RTSCAN CPU is generally 0 to 2%, sometimes 5% right now (during scan is much higher and never 0%).
We had some workstation problems last year that only appeared when Symantec was installed. I went to NOD32 and the problems vanished.
I’m not ready to remove all Virus Protection from the DB Server but I’m thinking of installing NOD32 instead.
And – I’m now prepared to move the Web Server to it’s own server.
Side note: I have an alternate Web Server (www2.xxxx.com) that goes to my Test / Standby server where I do my DB Development. Users complained that the web service crashed (Page cannot be displayed). On a hunch, I stopped my development SQL Service. Bingo, ASP came back like lightning. www2 does not access my development service. I am wondering if I’ve got a conflict or if I’m encountering a deadlock of some kind. That server (development) only has 1.5GB RAM so that might be part of it, but if this happens on the production server.
Appreciate your feedback on the case, but for better practice try avoiding installing AV on SQL Server as it will always steal system resources when SQL needs more to process the queries. If the SQL server is exposed to the internet then its better to keep behind firewall and block common ports on the server fo additional security.
On oll our sql server antivirus software is installed without any performance issues.
Just make sure that ALL your sql server directories where you store the db files (data, log, systemdb’s) is excluded from ALL checks (online and periodical).
<P mce_keep="true">We recently switched from Symantec to Trends and noticed a major performance difference for the worse. Also, the new IT guy that set it up did not exclude the SQL data, log, and tempdb directories and this hit us pretty hard. He got a good lashing and performance is better but not what I would like to see. So we are discussing the need to have it at all on the DB servers. I have a feeling this discussion will be like saying your religion is wrong and mine is right. There will be no correct answer and a whole bunch emails flying around. </P><P mce_keep="true">SJ</P><A href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MathomSolutionsBlog-it/~6/1" mce_href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MathomSolutionsBlog-it/~6/1"><IMG style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt="Mathom Solutions Blog-IT" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MathomSolutionsBlog-it.1.gif" mce_src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MathomSolutionsBlog-it.1.gif"></A>
KBA talks about best practices, and blog post too to weigh your discussion [
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