Windows or Linux Scan Engine?

InsightVM
1

Hi,

What OS scan engine do you recommend ?

Windows or Linux ?

Please share pros and cons of Windows or Linux Scan Engine.

Thanks !!

2

I think it partially depends upon your in-house skills and support. If you’re strictly a Windows shop, the better route is to stick with what will be best-supported and use Windows. Linux, on the other hand, is apparently preferred as the OS. Where I am we have both, and haven’t noticed a meaningful difference between the two. Of greater importance is making sure you meet the hardware requirements.

3

Thank you !! Rapid7 Support said the same thing. We are going with Windows.

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4

as @Rogue said, as far as performance goes there’s no big difference between the underlying OS for the scan engine. The main differentiator would be admin availability and how comfortable you are with deploying them. One thing I will note is since you’re deploying on a windows server, be sure to pay attention to the windows firewall upon install as it typically blocks a lot of the traffic. So either put in the rules locally on the engine to allow all outbound or disable that firewall.

Personally though, anytime there’s a choice between the two, Linux is the go to.

5

One is free, light weight, and completely configurable. The other is Windows.

All our scan engines are small CentOS boxes. Once you’ve built an image of one, it’s super easy to duplicate as needed without any costing or licensing to worry about.

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6

Windows is the most resource hungry OS. With limited use It won’t have much of a difference. Linux generally needs less updates. I like Linux when possible because it’s set and forget. And you can just spin up as many as you want whenever you want easily. It’s not like you need to do a bunch of work. Have an issue… spin up a new one.

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