A metric class is a group of metrics that are contained in an SMP MIB. NetIM includes a set of built-in metric classes and allows you to define additional metric classes. A user-defined metric class can contain metrics from a NetIM-supplied MIB or a user-supplied MIB.

Metric classes, whether built-in or user-defined, can be referenced in a Polling Profile.

An individual metric can be referenced in an Alert.

The data polled from built-in and user-defined metric classes are stored in the NetIM database (and aged out as described in Roll-up/age-out scheme). The alertable subset of those data are also made available to downstream solutions like Portal.

For information on built-in metric classes, see the Built-In Metrics and Metric Classes by Vendor/Device Type appendixes.