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Avast 4 Server Edition offers the most powerful protection to
fight virus infections on your server or servers. It works both as
primary protection of a file server itself, and, via its optional
plug-ins, as protection for various server subsystems, such as electronic
mail or firewall/proxy. Currently, the following plugins (editions)
are available:
- MS Exchange Server 2000/2003
- MS Proxy/ISA Server
- SMTP Server
- MS Sharepoint Server (both Portal Server 2001/2003 and Windows Sharepoint
Services 2003)
Antivirus Kernel 
The latest version of Avast antivirus kernel features world-class detection
abilities together with high performance (data throughput). You can expect
100% detection of In-the-Wild viruses and Trojan horses.
The kernel is certified by ICSA and the product frequently takes part
in the tests of Virus Bulletin magazine, yielding multiple VB100% awards.
Direct Cluster and Terminal Services support
Avast 4 Server Edition is ready to work and even supports large cluster
and terminal servers. It contains direct support for cluster setup, including
a special wizard that makes the installation on cluster easier.
 To
set up Avast on terminal environment, you can use another wizard that
guides you through the reconfiguration of Avast system for the work in
terminal mode. Such a reconfigured Avast system looks (and behaves) to
the terminal users as the standard Avast would for workstations.
The support for the terminals is not limited to the terminal
services by Microsoft; it is fully functional with Citrix MetaFrame system
as well.
Integration with the Operating System
Avast 4 Server Edition has been fully tested with all editions of Windows
Servers (starting with NT 4.0 and up to Windows Server 2003, including
Windows Storage Server 2003 and Windows Datacenter Server 2003). It is
fully optimised to take advantage of multiple CPUs and has been stress-tested
even on machines with a large number of processors to verify exceptional
robustness and salability of its technology.
Special care has been taken to ensure 100% compatibility with advanced
server components such as the VSS (volume shadow copy) and FRS (file replication
services), guaranteeing that your server will run flawlessly under all
circumstances.
64-bit support
Avast 4 Server Edition works perfectly even on IA-64 and AMD-64 based
machines. It is one of the very few AV solutions on the market that covers
this fast-emerging platform that is likely to gain more and more importance
in the upcoming years. More information you may found on page Avast
Antivirus and Windows x64 Edition.
Resident Protection
Resident protection which is the real-time protection on the computer,
is one of the most important parts of an antivirus program today. Avast
features a powerful resident module that is able to detect the virus before
it has any chance to infect your computer.
 The
file system protection ensures that no virus will be executed on startup,
and no virus will be even uploaded to it. The default settings of the resident
protection are accommodated to the server environment - it provides thorough
scanning. It is possible to adjust the settings to your requirements; you
can specify to scan the copied files, or just files with given set of extensions,
etc.
An important new feature is so-called "semi-silent" mode of operation.
The purpose is to correctly display virus warnings on a server system.
It works like this: if a request to load an infected file comes from a
network, an automatic action is taken and nothing is displayed. On the
other hand, when the request comes from a local or terminal session, the
usual interactive mode is used - as in desktop antivirus.
The resident module is highly optimised for speed and tested even in
heavy load. It fully utilizes the possibilities of today's powerful servers,
such as multiple CPUs (the scanning can be parallelized).
Developed especially to use on Terminal Server, Avast 4 Server Edition
contains additional resident modules for e-mail protection (Outlook/Exchange,
Internet Mail) and browser protection (Script Blocker).
User Interface
Even though the Server Edition contains both the user environments of
Avast - simple and enhanced - in server usage usually the enhanced user
interface will be employed (except for the terminal server). The enhanced
user interface gives you access to all the settings of Avast, thus making
it possible to fully configure it for extensive scanning.
The main principle is so called "antivirus task" based scanning. First,
you define the tasks used to scan for viruses, including the common parameters.
Then, you run these tasks (probably periodically). Every task generates
some results; of course, you can work with these results afterwards. Resident
protection is also a special type of task.
Another feature, closely connected with tasks, is the Scheduler. It makes
it possible to schedule the start of a particular task, both one-time and
periodically.
Notification Manager
To make work easier, Server Edition contains a special notification manager.
Here, you can define notification objects and associate them with antivirus
tasks (both resident and on-demand). Those notification objects are used
in the case when a virus is found.
The new version supports a number of notification objects, such as sending
e-mail messages using SMTP or MAPI (Outlook) Also supported are; SMS as
well, notification using the Windows popup mechanism (network message),
printing the message on a network printer, SNMP traps, or even sending
IM messages using MSN/Windows Messenger.
Automatic Updates
Automatic updates are another key point in virus protection, both the
virus database and the program itself can be updated automatically. The
updates are incremental, and only new data is downloaded, thus reducing
the transfer time. The typical size of a virus database update is approximately
of 20-80kb, the program update usually has approximately 200-500kb.
If your Internet connection is persistent, the updates are performed
completely automatically in fixed time intervals. If you connect to the
Internet only occasionally, Avast watches your connection and tries to
perform the update when you are online.
Push Updates
A special feature of the Server Edition is PUSH updates. It is a dramatic
change in the philosophy of updates, usually every installed program checks
periodically and when a new version is available downloads it. PUSH updates
however are initialised by our servers; they result in your computer quickly
responding and performing the necessary update. The system is based on
the SMTP protocol. The updates themselves are controlled by the Avast
resident e-mail providers (MS Outlook and Internet Mail).
The whole system is protected by asymmetric ciphers and is resistant
to unauthorized misuse.
Virus Chest
The Chest can be thought of as a Quarantine area on your disk having
special properties that make it a safe isolated place suitable for storing
certain files. You can work with the files in the Chest with security restrictions.
The main properties of the Virus Chest are complete isolation from the
rest of the operating system.
Boot-time scan
A special Avast feature is the boot-time scan. It is important in the
case of suspect that there might be an active virus on the computer. The
boot-time scan is performed during the start of the operating system, before
the virus can get loaded/activated - thus preventing the virus from spreading
or taking actions to avoid being detected.
Command-line Scanner
Experienced users may like another Server Edition feature which is the
command-line scanner. The scanning can be controlled by many arguments
and switches; it can be used as a pipe filter, also a special STDIN/STDOUT
mode is available.
The module is intended to be used in BATCH programs. Its output is the
same as the output from the Enhanced User Interface tasks (including the
report files). |
