Antivirus Exclusions for MOM and OpsMgr

Processes:

Excluding by process executable is very dangerous, in that it limits the control of scanning potentially dangerous files handled by the process, because it excludes any and all files involved.  For this reason, unless absolutely necessary, we will not exclude any process executables in AV configurations for MOM servers.  If you do want to exclude the processes – they are documented below:

MOM 2005 – momhost.exe

OpsMgr 2007 – monitoringhost.exe

Exclusion by Directories:

Real-time, scheduled scanner and local scanner file extension specific exclusions for Operations Manager:  The directories listed here are default application directories.  You may need to modify these paths based on your client specific designs.  Only the following MOM\OpsMgr related directories should be excluded. 

Important Note: When a directory to be excluded is greater than 8 characters in length, add both the short and long file names of the directory into the exclusion list. To traverse the sub-directories, this is required by some AV programs.

SQL Database Servers:

These include the SQL Server database files used by Operations Manager components as well as system database files for the master database and tempdb.  To exclude these by directory, exclude the directory for the LDF and MDF files:

Examples:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data

D:\MSSQL\DATA

E:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Log

MOM 2005 (management servers and agents):

These include the queue and log files used by Operations Manager.

Example:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\

OpsMgr 2007 (management servers and agents):

These include the queue and log files used by Operations Manager.

Example:

C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007\Health Service State\Health Service Store

Exclusion of File Type by Extensions:

Real-time, scheduled scanner and local scanner file extension specific exclusions for Operations Manager: 

SQL Database Servers:

These include the SQL Server database files used by Operations Manager components as well as system database files for the master database and tempdb. 

Examples:

MDF, LDF

MOM 2005 (management servers and agents):

These include the queue and log files used by Operations Manager.

Example:

WKF, PQF, PQF0, PQF1

OpsMgr 2007 (management servers and agents):

These include the queue and log files used by Operations Manager.

Example:

EDB, CHK, LOG.

Notes:

Page files should also be excluded from any real time scanning.