Antivirus software affects on SQL Server

Do virus protection programs affect SQL Server performance?
Antivirus software can certainly create a bottleneck due to the program requiring too much CPU time -- especially if the server is also running an e-mail server or program that requires a lot of antivirus resources (not necessarily a best practice). It can also create file I/O problems if real-time scanning is enabled for all files that are opened. I definitely recommend running malware protection on a SQL Server (or any database server for that matter), but be sure to exclude your database directories (or specific database files) from the real-time protection if you can. Also, keep an eye out on processor utilization to make sure the malware protection is not eating up all the resources.

This was first published in September 2004

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