We are using both NPM and VMAN to monitor our virtualization environment. Right now we have them as two separate tools but we want to perform the integration. Easy enough -- set up the master collector in NPM and run through the integration wizard to swing the data collection from NPM to VMAN for those nodes. While doing this for a test vCenter server recently we received a window that warned us that the credentials used to monitor that vCenter instance were different in NPM and VMAN.
Uh-oh.
Here's our problem -- we are in the process of implementing a second set of credentials for VMAN as per the Virtualization Admin Guide, chapter 2 > Excluding VMware Hosts from Monitoring. While we monitor everything in NPM, prod, non-prod, tek, stage, etc., VMAN (with its more expensive licensing) has a more limited scope. Working around this seemed straight-forward until we got to the integration and the warning about mis-matched credentials.
Once you've run the integration for a data source (in our case a vCenter instance) you can no longer change the Poll Through or ESX Credentials in Admin > Settings > Virtualization Settings > VMware tab. We can't use the VMAN limited accounts in NPM as that will exclude the visibility of certain clusters in NPM that are in scope there but not in scope in VMAN. We can't continue to use our unlimited accounts in VMAN as we will exceed our licensing even though we need that unlimited view in NPM.
Question: Is it safe to run a set of creds in NPM and a different set of creds in VMAN in spite of not being the preferred method? Is this supported? If not, any ideas?