Antivirus Exclusions
The information on this page is designed to assist IT managers and IT professionals decide what anti-virus strategy to follow with consideration to PReS and their internal requirements and needs. This page describes the mode of operation and the files and folders used by PReS as well as the files, folders and executables that are recommended to be ignored for best possible performance and to avoid issues caused by antivirus file locks.
IT managers and IT professionals then may decide the anti-virus strategy to follow for their internal requirements and needs depending on the statements outlined herein.
Directories and folders
All Connect applications are installed under an arbitrarily selectable main folder. If the default installation folder options were used, this installation folder would be %PROGRAMFILES%\Objectif Lune\OL Connect.
The installation folder will hold all the executable files and other files and folders required for the operation of the whole product suite. All these files and folders remain static after installation. It depends upon the company virus protection strategy, if such files and folders will be monitored or not.
We do, however, recommend that the following file or folders be excluded from antivirus protection.
Connect Service
The Connect Service is run via the executable file ServerService.exe. This file has been reported as causing issues with some antivirus packages, so we recommend adding this file to the antivirus exclusion list, if possible.
The executable will be installed to the installation target "Connect Server" sub-folder.The full installation folder can be found by entering %PROGRAMFILES%\Objectif Lune\OL Connect\Connect Server in Windows Explorer.
AFP Input
Performance issues have been reported with the AFP Input option under Windows Server versions from Windows Server 2012 onwards. The issues have been specifically associated with Windows Servers running Windows Defender, but the performance degradation might also be encountered when using other Antivirus applications.
Consequently, we recommend that an exclusion be made for the afp2pdf.exe executable file in your Antivirus application.
The afp2pdf.exe file is stored in a subfolder under the installation folder. If the exact installation folder name is required, enter the standardized system variable %PROGRAMFILES% in Windows Explorer and then search for afp2pdf.exe.
Working folders
Working folders for Connect are created and used on a per-user-basis under the respective user's profile folder, accessible on Windows with the standardized system variable %USERPROFILE% in the subfolder "Connect". Working folders are:
%USERPROFILE%\Connect\filestore: This folder will hold non-intermediate files for the operation of Connect. Files in this folder will be used frequently, but not with a high frequency. Supervising this folder with a virus protection system should not have too much of an impact on the speed of the whole Connect suite.%USERPROFILE%\Connect\logs: As the name implies, log files are created and updated here. These log files are plain text files. Virus protection may have an impact on the speed of the whole Connect suite.%USERPROFILE%\Connect\temp: Storage folder for temporary data, usually intermittent files in multiple folders. Virus protection on this folder and its subfolders may have a serious impact on the performance of Connect.%USERPROFILE%\Connect\workspace: Usually containing settings and helper files and folders. Supervising this folder with a virus protection system should not have too much of an impact on the speed of the whole Connect suite.
Database 1
Depending on the components installed, a database instance is created in a folder called "connect.database" under the Windows system temp folder. This folder is accessible via the standardized system variable %TMP%. Usually, folders holding such temporary files and folders should be excluded from a virus protection, because this influences the overall performance of the whole system at all. However the responsible person for the computer protection has to decide about the monitoring of such temporary folders following the company guidelines.
Database 2
Another database instance for Connect will be hold and used under the folder, which is intended to hold data, accessible by and for all users. The path to this folder is stored in the standardized system variable %PROGRAMDATA%. The Connect database instance is located in the subfolder "Connect\MySQL".
As this database will be in extremely strong usage, virus protection on this folder and its sub-folders may have a serious impact on the performance of Connect.