Hello,
I have a new DL4300. Should I be regularly running Windows Updates? Should I install any antivirus such as SEP or Malwarebytes Corporate? Anything I should be doing to protect it?
Thanks!
Hi rhosenfelt:
The DL4300 is a very reliable high performance backup appliance ... if you leave it alone.
This being said, you should update Windows albeit not automatically as the first step for a correct update is to disable and stop the core service (RapidRecoveryCore) [after making sure that no jobs are running on the appliance and] before installing the Windows Updates. The best approach is to adopt the corporate way of doing things, meaning putting some time on your calendar for a maintenance window.
All real time antivirus software work via filter drivers which sit between the OS kernel and the rest of the machine. As such all IOs are intercepted and analyzed. (some AV software is doing it only for read IOs other for both read and write). This in turn has a dramatic impact on backup performance due to the enormous amount of data that is transferred to the core and the IOPS intensive background jobs performed on the repository such as rollups, deferred deletes, mountatbility etc which are executed all the time. If you MUST install AV software, make sure to create the appropriate exclusions (more information here: https://support.quest.com/kb/117680).
As such, if you can place the appliance in a secure environment with limited direct and internet access, it makes sense to avoid installing AV software. To mitigate any marginal risks it makes sense to run any one time AV scans such as Microsoft Safety scanner (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/products/scanner) at maintenance time, while keeping the core service stopped and disabled.
Hope that this helps.
