Azure Site Recovery (ASR) Scout: Antivirus exclusion guidance
Most customers will have some kind of antivirus on the production servers to secure their environments.
However, if the customer has to protect these servers using Scout, we recommend excluding the below directory paths from antivirus scans as that could cause other serious replication issues.
Source servers
Possible issues
- High RPOs - Antivirus scans would delay the differential file processing on source servers (only in case of datafile mode) and delay the sync. This could contribute to some RPOs
- Out-of-sync - Replications could report out of sync as the datafiles from the Scout agent application directory path on source server may get deleted by Antivirus due to false detects. This would cause a Resync required condition.
Exclusions
To avoid the above, please exclude the below directory paths and sub-folders on servers protected using Scout
- Installation path of Scout agent, by default it is "C:\Program Files (x86)\InMage Systems"
- Application cache directory, by default it goes under installation path. If configured separately, please check here. By default, path is open "C:\Program Files (x86)\InMage Systems\hostconfigwxcommon.exe" and check Application cache on "Agent" tab
- In case of MSCS cluster volumes, "InMageClusterLog" folder under every cluster volume
Antivirus on Scout Master-target (MT) servers
While most customers don't really install anything on Master-target (MT) except the Scout software as MTs are already in secured environments. However, if customer has to install Antivirus on Scout MTs, we recommend excluding the below directory paths from antivirus scans as that could cause other serious replication issues
Possible issues
- High RPOs - Antivirus scans would delay the differential file processing on target servers and delay the sync. This could contribute to some RPOs
- Out-of-sync - Replications could report out of sync as the files from the target cache may get deleted by Antivirus due to false detects. This would cause a Resync required condition.
- Recovery failure - Recovery could fail if the retention log files from target server may be deleted by Antivirus due to false detects and so can result in inconsistent data recovery
Exclusions
To avoid the above, please exclude the below directory paths and sub-folders on Scout targets/ MTs
- Installation path of Scout MT, by default it is "C:\Program Files (x86)\InMage Systems"
- Target cache directory, by default it goes under installation path. If configured separately, please check here. By default, path is "C:\Program Files (x86)\InMage Systems\hostconfigwxcommon.exe" and check Application cache "Agent" tab
- All Retention log volumes
- C:\SRV path and sub-folders