Let’s see how authenticated scanning works in Qualys. Nessus stores scanning credentials in related Scan Policy (see “Tenable Nessus: registration, installation, scanning and reporting“). Iit’s not always convenient. In Qualys you can set up a scanning record and configure for which hosts it will be used.
I downloaded Qualys Virtual Scanning Appliance VirtualBox image and configured it as it was described in “Using Qualys Virtual Scanner Appliance“. The only difference: I configured second network device as VirtualBox “Host Only Adapter” to scan virtual machines on my host. You can see how to configure VirtualBox “Host Only Adapter” in my post here.