Symantec 10551441 Administration Guide - Page 37

Managing Symantec AntiVirus 37 About clients and servers About clients and servers The Symantec AntiVirus client program provides antivirus protection for networked and non-networked computers. The Symantec AntiVirus client program protects 32-bit and supported 64-bit computers running supported Windows versions. The Symantec AntiVirus server program manages other computers running Symantec AntiVirus and supported legacy versions of Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition, and can push configuration and virus definitions files updates to these clients. In addition, the Symantec AntiVirus software provides antivirus protection for the computers on which it runs. Symantec AntiVirus clients are always managed by a server. Note: The Symantec AntiVirus server program is not supported on 64-bit computers. When you manage with the Symantec System Center, computers running Symantec AntiVirus server can assume the following roles: ■ Primary server ■ Secondary server ■ Parent server About primary servers Each server group has an administrator-designated primary server. The primary server is responsible for configuration functions in the server group. It can also be responsible for new virus definitions files updates. From the Symantec System Center console, when you launch a task at the server group level, the task runs on the server group's primary server. The primary server also forwards the task on to all other servers in the server group. If you are using Alert Management System2, the primary server also processes all notifications. Computers running any of the supported operating systems for servers can be made primary servers. How the registry is affected When you modify server options, you directly modify the registries of the selected servers. The modification is made through the transport manager, which handles communications.