Hi redhawk15,
There's several questions buried in here, so let me help as best I can:
- Your data collection issues could be happening for multiple reasons. This could range from the simple - the server you are trying to talk to is dead or there is a network firewall between STM and the target device - to more complex - e.g. you are exceeding a polling threshold and device collection can't keep up or there is something wonky with config. These kinds of issues are a little difficult to troubleshoot over forum without getting some more detailed diags from the system to point to the culprit. I would highly recommend opening a Support Ticket so that Support can take a look at these for you and narrow down root cause.
- Your license issue could be the source of data collection issues, but it's not necessarily the cause - i can't really tell from the info given. The way STM's licensing works, we only count the spindles in your SAN or NAS devices (storage arrays), not in the physical or virtual servers you are monitoring. One way you could test if exceeding your license was causing data collection issues (and again, that would only affect collection from devices that were storage arrays and that pushed you over your limit) is to remove an array at a time until you are back below your license level.
- The Storage Manager Agent for Linux or Windows is what you need if you want to deploy another proxy agent. These come in 32 or 64 bit flavors, we generally recommend the 64 bit flavor unless you are constrained to 32 bit for some reason. These downloads are available in your Customer Portal. For deployment guidance, I would reference Chapter 5 of the STM Admin Guide. This should help you size that VM for the polling needs. In general, we would recommend that you give it a dedicated VM - the agents do quite a bit of work and can use whatever resources are given to them.
Let me know if you have any more questions.