With so many Windows based servers, how do you prevent viruses from roaming across your local network? I have a home based office. I buy Microsoft Live OneCare Anti Virus for my physical machines. But then I noticed my virtual machines didn’t had the a reassuring icon on the taskbar tray showing the system had been secured. It was time to find an anti-virus.

First I thought about purchasing more licenses of Microsoft Live OneCare. It has been good so far. Haven’t had any outbreak on my network. It even detected some viruses that CA eTrust had missd before I un-installed it.

But then I thought: at the rate I am creating virtual servers I will go bankrupt. More than that, these servers are only used once in a while. Most of the time they are off. So I just want to put some basic protection in them so that my virtualization server doesn’t become a petri dish for all kinds of nasties.

Searching in Google for Open Source Anti-Virus I found Clam Win. Installed it on my virtual machine, and started a scan - finished fairly quickly. I do not know if it was ultra-efficient or just not very thorough. One of the inconveniences about anti-virus is that it is like insurance: you do not find out if it was good until disaster happens. Opinions from trusted sources also help.  One thing I didn’t liked was that it doesn’t scan on the fly, as you download things from the web, for example.  Not a big problem when most of the interaction of these development virtual servers are with other machines within my own network.  Certainly not something I want to use on my roaming laptop.

Have you used Open Source Anti-Virus products?