Exclude VM directory from HOST Virus scan Yes or No

jimbo45

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Hi there.

Can't seem to find any sensible consensus on this topic - and it never seems to be discussed so am I missing something here.

If say I have a Windows Guest running its own AV software whether it's Windows defender or anything else then it seems to me that by having the HOST also running an AV software we are going to have two pieces of AV software running on the same data areas (the VM Disks).

It would seem to make sense to exclude the VM directories from the HOST's AV scan when the VM's are running -- but I haven't seen any mechanism to dynamically turn off parts of the AV system -- it's either an ALL or NONE mechanism.

I'm sure the performance of both HOST and GUESTS could be enhanced if AV software was ONLY running on the machines it needed to be - but AV software doesn't seem to allow for excluding certain parts of the machines.

If I have up and running say 4 VM's - that's my normal usage - then on the Virtual Machine directory on the Host I could have 5 (yes FIVE) AV pieces of software scanning / protecting it (The VM directories / data areas) at all times -- I think even the most security conscious person on the planet would suggest that this is indeed grossly overkill. - The VM's of course need to be individually protected if they are on the Net.

If you use VM's a lot (and I do) you want to get as much performance as possible out of them. As an individual I can't afford masses amount of hardware like enterprises have but I still want my VM's to run as efficiently as possible.

Cheers
jimbo
 

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I don't think it takes much time/cpu effort whatsoever to scan the couple of files that comprise a VM. I've never once even considered adjusting the AV on my host machine to exclude the D:\VMs directory that contain all of my VM's.

My primary box at work that I run my personal VM's on is a Core i7-3770 with 16GB of RAM and about 5 hard drive spindles (all 7,200RPM). My work laptop is a Core i7 with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD that I run some portable VM's on. My secondary VM box at work is a Core 2 Duo E8400 with 8GB of RAM and 2 hard drive spindles. I find these boxes to do a solid job of letting me experiment and learn in my labs before I move stuff to our real servers or most likely Amazon EC2.
 

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