A system, method, and computer-readable medium for performing a data center management and monitoring operation. The data center management and monitoring operation includes: identifying data forwarder configuration information for a plurality of data forwarders, the forwarder configuration information including scheduling information; scheduling collection of data from a data source according to the scheduling information; collecting data from a data source based upon the scheduling, the collecting using the forwarder configuration information to identify the data to be collected; formatting the data collected from the data source according to the data forwarder configuration information to provide formatted data; and, forwarding the formatted data to a recipient.