The Splunk Add-on for VMware is used when you want to collect data from your VMware environment but don't have ITSI or IT Essentials Work installed. If you have IT Essentials Work or ITSI and want that data to be utilized in the ITSI environment then yes, you would install the metrics version. It is the version that the ITSI documentation requires. https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/ITSI/4.12.0/Entity/aboutVMW I personally wouldn't see the point in installing both. They both require the use of DCNs to collect information from the API. If you are interested in ITSI, IT Essentials Work is a watered-down version and with it you can check out some of the included VMWare dashboards that work with the logs you are ingesting.
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