If by "autoprotect data" you mean run a server-based scan, that is correct, the filer does not have a built-in virus scanner. However, there are good reasons why you don't want to do that. One obvious reason is that the filer would be slowed down because every file access requires the virus scanner to get involved, which penalizes all users. It is much better to do the scanning on the clients since that has the correct scaling properties.

You should have virus scanning software loaded on all your clients, but you should also have one or more clients run periodic on-demand scans of the filer data. There are several advantages to running the scans from standard PC clients, not least of which is the rapid availability of updated versions to catch the latest viruses. Another advantage is that with multiple PC clients you can parallelize the scans, which can be a great timesaver if you have a large amount of data to scan.

You should also make sure your NT administrator understands the advantages of snapshots, which can be used to very good effect when a new virus is found for which there is no anti-virus software yet. And, of course, the filer is not directly susceptible to viruses because it does not run general applications. Overall, I'd say the filer has a very good anti-virus story compared to NT server.

Mark

-----Original Message----- From: Mark D Fowle [mailto:Fowle_Mark_D@CAT.com] Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 1999 7:03 AM To: toasters Subject: Virus

Our NT Administrator wants to know how to protect the NetApps from viruses. Unlike running on an NT server he says he can't autoprotect data. Does anyone know how this might be done?

Mark Fowle Caterpillar-BCP