ESMC Virtual Appliance or Windows?

[Quimax 0]

We're trialing ESet,  looking to move from Kaspersky. In setting up the server, I went "Oooo Virtual Appliance, that should be easy!" However it seems most of the instructions are for the Windows Server based install.

Our user base is scattered far & wide. In country here we have pathetic internet (1.5Mb down VSAT for the entire office) for a couple of remote offices, slightly better for our main office, and random other users in about 6 countries world-wide.

Before we get more than 5 PC's in it, I'd like to hear opinions and experiences that others have between using the two, supposedly feature identical, installation types.

[carmik 0]

I was looking around for other information and stumbled upon your thread. Been using KES and KSC for around 3 years or so and recently switched to ESET, using ERA and now ESMC.

I've been having HUGE problems during upgrade (KES 10 SP1, IIRC). Each major upgrade on Kaspersky was followed by days, weeks and months of non-responsive clients.

Basically on ESET the clients run quite reliably. You might run into some issues with firewalling on the ESET Endpoint Security products, if you do not take care of properly adjusting the so-called security zones. I've been mainly using ESET Endpoint Antivirus, so for me this is not a major issue.

Kaspersky seems to have better support for locally storing updates and installers, whereas in the ESET approach everything is downloaded from ESET servers. You can install components like the ESET proxy or an apache (or equivalent HTTP proxy) to ease transfers, however it is much less optimal than in the kaspersky case. And, of course, the ESET solutions require further tinkering.

The ESET client runs EXTREMELY reliable. TBH, I hoped that server upgrades would be easier than Kaspersky (if not as easy as the F-secure), however the reality is that an upgrade like ERA to ESMC (that is one major server version to another major) was more difficult to do than Kaspersky. However, in the end everything runs ok with some minor glitches in the ESET case.

E-mail interception seems to be "better" on Kaspersky. Using quotes here, because it did not produce high-cpu usage on thunderbird clients, as I've witnessed in some cases with ESET endpoint clients.

Both solutions seem to support WANs, but I have no experience on the subject. There's also cloud management, but you'll definitely need some proxies at each point of presence, since you're mentioning bandwidth issues. There's a pretty well written analysis of bw requirements in this:  https://help.eset.com/era_install/65/en-US/infrastructure_sizing.html

Bottomline for me, I switched (after a long trial) to eset because the clients run better: no critical issues (system locks, av not running etc) and nicer management via native web interface. You can host the "server" part on some VM platform.

Hope I've helped.

[MichalJ 434]

@Quimax Basically this would depend on the fact, how big is your network, and how much aware you are of the Linux Platform (as the appliance is build based on CentOS) + whether you have available VMware / hypervisor resource, or some Windows Server. 

You can find the information about how to deploy the ESMC Virtual Appliance here: https://help.eset.com/esmc_deploy_va/70/en-US/ 

Administration guide is basically similar for both Windows and Linux (appliance) as there are none differences.  With regards to others, our internal statistics show, that approx 20% of our deployments are appliances, the rest is running a standalone Windows Server installation.  

As you have mentioned that your clients are scattered, how they will be connecting in? Will be your console exposed to the internet, or your clients will be connecting over VPN? It should not make a difference, however the agents will have to have the visibility to the server. 

@carmik If you may, what were the problems you have encountered during the upgrade procedure? We are continuously working on addressing those, so I am interesting in learning about your problems. 

[bbahes 29]

On 3/13/2019 at 6:49 AM, Quimax said:

We're trialing ESet,  looking to move from Kaspersky. In setting up the server, I went "Oooo Virtual Appliance, that should be easy!" However it seems most of the instructions are for the Windows Server based install.

Our user base is scattered far & wide. In country here we have pathetic internet (1.5Mb down VSAT for the entire office) for a couple of remote offices, slightly better for our main office, and random other users in about 6 countries world-wide.

Before we get more than 5 PC's in it, I'd like to hear opinions and experiences that others have between using the two, supposedly feature identical, installation types.

We used Kaspersky before we switched to ESET v5. We had so many problems with performance and also, at the time, some of our clients used Home versions of Windows clients, that Kasperky does not support. Currently we are at ERA v5 + EES v5 and planning to jump to ESMC v7 + EES v7. 

With ERA v5 we had to use Windows as server. With ESMC v7 we are considering only Linux virtual appliance. I wish in future, ESET move all products to Linux VA's.

There are several factors that drove me as project leader to Linux. Performance, Patch Management, Security, Licensing.

Initially I was not happy with v6, but as time is moving, v7 seems logical step in endpoint security management. If you don't like on-premise solutions as I, and your business allows moving solutions to cloud, you might wanna check cloud version and never bother with Patch Management and Security of virtual appliance.

 

Update: There are sometimes problems with major version upgrades on client and server side, but this is all handled either by guys on this forum or by your local support team.

Edited March 14, 2019 by bbahes