The Collector
A single VM-based middleware appliance that ingests infrastructure, asset, and application data — deployable on VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix, AWS, Azure, or GCP.
What the Collector is
The Collector is a small, read-only VM appliance you deploy once per site or environment. It talks to the local management plane — vCenter, SCVMM, Prism Central, or a cloud provider's API — discovers hosts, clusters, VMs, and network topology, and relays everything outbound to LatencyLabs over a single HTTPS connection. No inbound access is ever required, and no production system is modified.
6 platforms
VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix, AWS, Azure, GCP
Read-only
No write access requested from any platform
Outbound-only
HTTPS to ingest.latencylabs.io is the only firewall change
When to use a Collector
Whether the Collector is required or optional depends on the platform:
Private virtualization — required
VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix have no public, SaaS-reachable endpoint. The Collector runs as a guest VM on the platform itself, polls the local management API, and is the only way to ingest these environments.
Public cloud — optional
AWS, Azure, and GCP already connect via a direct, read-only API credential (see cloud account access). Deploying a Collector VM there instead uses the exact same permission set — it's a network topology choice, for teams that want one controlled egress point or can't grant cross-account IAM trust, not a different trust model.
Platform guides
Deployment artifact, sizing, permissions, and network requirements for each supported platform. Packages will be available to early access customers — join the waitlist to get download access.
VMware vSphere
Requires a Collector VM — no public endpoint to poll
| Purpose | Direction | Port / Protocol | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Collector → vCenter | Outbound | TCP 443 | Polls the vCenter Server management API for hosts, clusters, and VM inventory. |
| Collector → LatencyLabs ingestion | Outbound | TCP 443 | HTTPS to ingest.latencylabs.io. No inbound rules required. |
Ready to deploy your first Collector?
Explore the interactive demo to see exactly what a connected Collector looks like in the Integrations portal, or head back to Prerequisites for cloud IAM and team setup.