Deploying Scanners in Azure Platform

Prerequisites

The Virtual Scanner option must be turned on for your account. Contact Qualys Support or your Technical Account Manager if you want us to turn on this option. You must be a Manager or a sub-user with the Manage virtual scanner appliances permission. This permission may be granted to Unit Managers. Your subscription may be configured to allow this permission to be granted to Scanners

Cost and Licenses

Qualys Virtual Scanner Appliance is available as an Image at Azure Marketplace, ready for customers to launch onto Azure Virtual Machines. There are two aspects to consider:

• Qualys costs for the virtual scanner license subscription
• Azure costs for the computing resources to run the appliance as a virtual machine

Ensure you only use the image available at the Azure marketplace or the Signed URL provided by Qualys for downloadable Azure-specific images. Using images downloaded from Qualys UI is not recommended to be used on Azure.

Qualys Cost

You need to acquire a Qualys license for each virtual scanner appliance Instance you would like to run. This license is acquired from Qualys, not from Azure, and our scanner appliances are listed at Azure Marketplace with a BYOL (that means -bring your own license) model accordingly. Each Qualys Virtual Scanner Appliance profile you define in the Qualys Cloud Platform UI consumes a single virtual scanner appliance license. If you delete a virtual scanner appliance profile from your Qualys subscription, that license is freed up and immediately available for re-use. Contact your Qualys technical account manager or Qualys reseller for a pricing quotation or to request an evaluation.

Azure Cost

For each virtual scanner appliance, the virtual machine is launched into one of your own Azure Subscriptions. You are responsible for paying Azure for the costs of running the appliance. Those costs include:

• Compute Capacity based on size
• Storage - Data transfer IN/OUT

The compute capacity charges (i.e., CPU, RAM) are overwhelmingly the largest part of the costs to run an Instance. Note that you are not required to keep your scanner appliance(s) running at all times. Any hours during which your virtual machine is stopped are incurring only per provisioned storage charges. For those able to spend a little more upfront, Azure virtual machines can be reserved in advance by financially committing for one or three years to save. However, scanners should be turned on for at least several hours weekly to ensure they stay up-to-date with software and signatures.