This article got lost in the works, however I feel the information is still relevant and wanted to pass it along.

3/24/2011
This will hopefully be the final segment in this article series. Parts 1 to 3 tell the story of woe and despair with conflicts and issues arising between or with Windows Small Business Server 2008 (SBS 2008) and ESET Exchange Server Edition.

As you have read in Parts 1, 2 and 3, the service from ESET’s technical support was disappointing. The customer called ESET’s sales department and they were great. They reviewed the status of the issues and agreed to refund, in full, the customer the balance of their account back to when the first issues were recorded by ESET technical support. So from me to the ESET sales department, “Good Job, that is how we take care of customers.”
Twelve plus weeks later, still no refund. So from me to ESET’s sales department “Sucky job ESET, sucky job.”

Since ESET did not work out, during November 2010, the customer self reviewed for other products and narrowed the list down. She then asked me to research F-Secure’s server edition. I checked out issues by searching for “issues with”, “problems using”, “crashed caused by” and strangely enough did not find any forums with these problems listed. I primarily searched Lockergnome and Tech Republic and then generic Google searches. The only relevant things found were articles written by F-Secure on how to solve issues and upon reviewing some of them, I did not see anything directly related to the previous problems we had been dealing with.

So the first week of December, the customer purchased and downloaded F-Secure. Well, all good things come to those who wait however; right now we are still waiting as of this writing (March 24th 2011). We are experiencing issues with F-Secure related to Exchange as well as SharePoint. Many appear to be the same as we had with ESET, the difference is we now are getting better descriptions of the events and errors so diagnosis has been a little easier.

There have been numerous calls and emails to F-Secure by the client, as well as forum checks (this client is apparently are still the only person on the planet with these problems) and still no resolution. The security settings by F-Secure are causing server Event errors as well as dragging down the system.

IFix staff has manually adjusted, tuned and played with the various F-Secure programs (it is not just one program but a series of several for the different aspects of server software). We have been forced to turn off SharePoint, the anti-virus software updates for the individual computers had to be turned to go to the internet instead of updating off the server. The anti-virus updates still fill up 37 to 40 GB of hard drive storage on the server for 4 to 6 hours at a time before they self delete.

The joy of Small Business Server where all features can be combined in one machine for small business.

Update 10/23/13

I should have posted this a few years ago, I have no excuse. By May 2011 we still had not resolved the issue. I did hire outside help to go through the problems between March and May, they too could not figure out what was happening and why.

By mid May, the business that this was in split into two separate businesses. The business that stayed in the same physical location went with a new IT company, one that also did business with them (they are a financial services company). I understand that, don’t like it but understand it. The part of the business that broke off was and is still a great customer.

Since they moved locations, they ended up needing new computers and a server. With all the issues of the server anti-virus, we chose to install only PC based anti-virus (ESET) and have once of the computers scan the mapped drives to the server data folders. On the server I have installed Spybot Search and Destroy and Malwarebytes, monthly I update and scan with these along with an internet based anti-virus scan. There are several options available for an internet based scan, the key thing to remember is that they do not provide constant protection, they only scan for issues after the fact.
Until we meet again, have a virus free week.