# Enabling Optimized Scans for Virtual Machines

You can enable optimized scan for VMs that have a large number of files (that is, millions) to be indexed. The optimized scanning method scans only files modified between the previous backup and the current backup, helping improve scan efficiency and performance.

Note

Optimized scanning is not supported when scanning Windows virtual machines using Linux access nodes.

## Before You Begin

- Ensure that the VM name and the client name are the same.

- Install the file system package on VMs.

- Disable file system backups.

## Index Cache and Job Results Disk Space Requirements

Virtual machine Threat Scan operations require disk space on the Backup MediaAgent — which also hosts the Threat Scan index — and on the Threat Scan access nodes where the job results directory resides.

- Minimum disk space requirement for index cache: 1 TB

- Minimum disk space requirement for job results directory: 1 TB

- Operating system disk: Optimized scans require sufficient free space on the operating system (OS) disk. As a guideline, allocate approximately 1 GB of free OS disk space for every 1 million files being scanned. For example, if 25 million items are scanned concurrently across 5 VMs, each VM scans approximately 5 million items. In this scenario, each VM should have at least 5 GB of free OS disk space, for a total of 25 GB of free space across all five VMs.

## Procedure

1. Install the file system core or file system agent on the client computer.

2. Backup VMs as virtual server workloads.

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