How to configure Anti Malware for cloud Services

Question

Is there a way to enable Anti-malware monitoring of cloud service. With the latest release for enabling cloud service, should we still need to have power shell has start up for cloud Services and Power-shell will invoke XML template of anti malware.

I could not be proper documentation of how to enable from Cloud Services solution perspective

Here are the Some of the questions:

1. Should i still need to have Power shell has startup and configure it for CSDEF file
2. Where should i place xml template in cloud project, in the power shell, we need to give location of xml file, should xml file and power shell script should be @ same level i.e in the same directory
3. If we enable Monitoring of Anti malware services for cloud services, we need to give storage account, is there a way where storage account pickup dynamically based on envrionment we are deploying. End of the day,I'm looking for automated way of setting Monitoring in Production and UAT envrionments

Answer 1

For installing any software in a cloud service, the approach I've found to be best is to implement the OnStart() method in the WebRole.cs class of a project that you've deployed. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.windowsazure.serviceruntime.roleentrypoint.onstart.aspx)

You can do something like:

1. Download the software you need, or reference a file you've bundled with the code.
2. Install it.
3. Configure it.
4. Run it.

For the big picture - monitoring environments - I wouldn't spend too much time on anti-virus/malware software. No one is installing that if they can't get access to your machine.

Things you can do to lock down your machine/monitor it:

1. Make sure all your endpoints are locked down. Only expose ports that need to be used, for example, port 80 for HTTP.
2. Use SSL for HTTP.
3. Install something like Bosun (http://bosun.org/) or Opserver (https://github.com/opserver/Opserver) to monitor CPU, RAM, network connections etc.

(Note: Tried installing Bosun on a Windows Cloud Service earlier this week and not all the metrics seem to be reporting.)

Answer 2

Use the PowerShell cmdlet, Set-AzureServiceAntimalwareExtension to enable antimalware in your cloud service. Here's some more info:

• Set-AzureServiceAntimalwareExtension