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I want one product to cover for Anti-virus & Firewall purposes. The product should also be lightweight and of course designed for windows server. Any suggestions?

Note: I don't need an enterprise solution for the clients - only for the server.

BTW, I currently using Symantec SEP, but it's too heavy (during weekly scans) for the server to handle and is not designed for server purposes.

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Can you advise what is "too heavy"? SEP is designed for servers but may need some tweaks. Exactly what is happening that causes the issue during weekly scans. Also, what exact version of SEP are you running? RU5? – Dave M Mar 2 '10 at 21:15
I use SEP MR4. Each weekly scan makes the whole machine reacts really slow... – Eran Betzalel Mar 3 '10 at 0:01
If you're concerned with the performance of the server, I cannot recommend an external firewall strongly enough. Even if random port scans never make it past that software FW on your server, it still has to process each malice-laden request. – Kara Marfia Aug 10 '10 at 22:30

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There's no "correct" answer to this. I use the Kaspersky antivirus at work for my servers and I'm happy with it. Why do you want a 3rd party firewall on a server? This is one case where the on-device job is probably well served by the built in windows tools.

Sorry, you already have SEP for what? The firewall or the AV side? As for lightweight, a dedicated virus scanner, properly tweaked, plus the windows firewall is probably as "light" as you're going to get.

I also think Dave is correct when he says that SEP ought to be up to the job. As much as I personally despise symantec, their enterprise tools aren't that bad and if performance really is bad then you either have inadequate resources, unrealistic expectations, poor configuration (e.g. are there lots of multi-level archives on this machine and the AV is set to scan them all the time?) or another unrelated issue that's the actual cause of the slowdown you're experiencing. Sorry if that sounds harsh but that's how I see it.

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You mean using the internal windows firewall? – Eran Betzalel Mar 2 '10 at 23:45
Sorry that bit wasn't too clear was it, yes I'd use the Windows firewall. I'd also have another "real" firewall in front of the datacentre too. – RobM Mar 3 '10 at 6:34
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I already have SEP for that, but I want some "lighter" solution. – Eran Betzalel Mar 3 '10 at 7:22

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