Qualys Physical Scanner Appliance

The physical Scanner Appliance supports internal scanning capabilities, including vulnerability scanning, compliance scanning and web application scanning. The Scanner Appliance User Guide gives you step by step instructions to help you set up and deploy a scanner appliance within your network environment.

The Physical Scanner Appliance supports internal scanning capabilities, including vulnerability, compliance, and web application scanning. The Scanner Appliance User Guide gives you step-by-step instructions on how to set up and deploy a scanner appliance within your network environment.

Physical Scanner Appliances: QGSA-6120-B1 | QGSA-6120-A1 | QGSA-5120-A1 | QGSA-4120-A1

Product Comparison

The following table helps to compare available physical scanner types and choose the correct scanner.

Type

QGSA-6120-B1

QGSA-6120-A1

QGSA-5120-A1

QGSA-4120-A1

CPU

Intel Xeon® E Hexa-Core 2.60GHz, 16M Cache, 16 T, 65W TDP, FCLGA1200

Intel Xeon® E Hexa-Core 2.90GHz, 12M Cache, 12 T, 65W TDP, FCLGA1200

Intel Xeon® Quad-Core 3.8GHz, 8MB Cache

Intel Xeon® Quad-Core 3.5GHz, 8M Cache

Memory

64GB DDR4-3200 ECC (up to 128 GB)

32GB DDR4-3200 ECC (up to 128 GB)

16GB DDR4-2400

16GB DDR3-1600

Scanning Capacity

1245 units

1040 units

910 units

835 units

Increased Capacity

20% more than QGSA-6120-A1

14% more than QGSA-5120-A1

10% more than QGSA-4120-A1

2x more than QGSA-3120-A1

Power Socket

Dual Power Socket

Single Power Socket

Single Power Socket

Single Power Socket

Production Image version

QAL-4.1

QAL-4.1

QAL-2.1

QAL-2.1

Storage

500GB, PCIe, NVMe, M.2, SSD

500GB M.2 2280 NVMe SSD

480GB, M.2 SSD

1TB, 2.5”, SATA 6Gb/s, 5400RPM HDD

Supported Applications

64-bit Applications

64-bit Applications

32-bit Applications

32-bit Applications

Ethernet

Two 10GbE LAN

Two 10GbE LAN

Two GbE ports

Two GbE ports

Kernel

64-bit kernel

64-bit kernel

32-bit kernel

32-bit kernel

Scanners

64-bit scanners

64-bit scanners

32-bit scanners

32-bit scanners

USB

Two USB 3.2 ports

Two USB 3.2 ports

Two USB 2.0 ports + two USB 3.0 ports

Two USB 2.0 ports

Power Input

100-240 VAC, 50-60Hz, 5A-3A Single phase

100-240 VAC, 50-60Hz, 4A-2A Single phase

100-240 VAC, 50-60Hz, 4A Single phase

100-240 VAC, 50-60Hz, 4A Single phase

Power Consumption

Max: 102W (348 BTU/hr); Typical: 88W (300 BTU/hr)

Max: 75W (256 BTU/hr); Typical: 65W (222 BTU/hr)

Max: 91W (310 BTU/hr); Typical: 80W (273 BTU/hr

Max: 91W (310 BTU/hr); Typical: 80W (273 BTU/hr)

Scanning Capacity

Scanning capacity estimates the maximum scan job units a scanner can handle when idle (not scanning). This estimate ensures scalability and stability.

As the scanner picks up new jobs and slices, available units decrease, and the remaining capacity is recalculated to determine how many more jobs it can take.

Each scan type (for example, VM, PC) has a predefined unit cost. A VM scan uses two units per IP, meaning a scanner with 1000 units can scan up to 500 IPs in parallel when split across multiple parallel scan jobs. Parallel scan jobs depend on performance profile settings.

Contact Qualys Support to learn more about option profile settings.

Interested in Virtual Appliances?

Qualys Virtual Scanner Appliance is packaged and qualified for deployment on various virtualization and cloud platforms. If you are interested in adding virtual appliances to your license, contact your TAM or Qualys Support.

VMware Workstation, Player, Fusion, Oracle VirtualBox, VMware vCenter/vSphere, Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V Amazon EC2 - Classic, Amazon EC2 - VPC, Microsoft Azure, Google GCE, OpenStack

Learn more

Qualys Virtual Appliance: Platform Qualification Matrix

Scanner Appliance Security: FAQs

Before You Begin

Check Package Accessories properly after unpacking.

Your starter kit package must contain the following components. If any components are missing or damaged, contact Qualys Support.

  • Qualys Scanner Appliance User Guide
  • AC power cord
  • CAT6 cable
  • Rack screws (quantity 4) - 10-32 x 3/4", Phillips, black matte, with washer
  • USB-to-RS232 converter cable

Best Practices for Internal Scanning

Here are our best practices related to internal scanning.

Avoid Scanning Through a Firewall from Inside Out

Issues can occur when scan traffic is routed through the firewall from the internal network to the external network. This situation arises when the scanning appliance is located within the protected network and scans a target on the other side of the firewall. To avoid this, we recommend positioning scanning appliances within your network topology to eliminate scanning and mapping through the firewall from the inside out. For more information, see Scanning through a Firewall.

Check Network Access to Scanners

Log into your account and go to Help > About in the application. The Scanner Appliances section lists URLs at the SOC (Security Operations Center) for your account/location. Your Scanner Appliances must be able to contact these URLs on port 443. For Private Cloud Platform, the URLs displayed are appropriate to your local on-site SOC. For more information, see How to check network access to scanners?

Consult Your Network Group for Scanner Placement

It is highly recommended that you work with your network group to determine where to place Scanner Appliances in an enterprise network environment. Some things to consider: place Scanner Appliances as close to target machines as possible, and make sure to monitor and identify any bandwidth restricted segments or weak points in the network infrastructure. Scanning through layer 3 devices (such as routers, firewalls and load balancers) could result in degraded performance so you may consider using our VLAN tagging feature (VLAN trunking) to circumvent layer 3 devices to avoid potential performance issues.