IOS configuration using SNMP?

[Lombravia]

Hi,

I have a universty project coming up, where I got the idea of making a web based IOS GUI which utilises SNMP. The academic level of the project is relatively low, so it doesn't necessarily have to be a perfect solution, so keep that in mind.

Now, I didn't research the matter more closely until a few weeks ago, and now I understand that the configuration capabilities of SNMP are very limited, and instead you have to resort to uploading configuration snippets to merge with running config. As far as I understand, this is what ASDM and Solarwinds do? I don't like it at all, however. I'm not sure that I would be able to gather all the syntax differences from different version, past, present and future.

Anyway, what I'd like to know exactly how limited the IOS SNMP MIBs are. What sort of things can or can you not set using SNMP? And what about get? For some reason I'm thinking that's less limited, but I don't really know. Can you get the equivalent of all, almost all or most IOS show commands? I know about the MIB browser, but I'm not interested in specific objects. I just want a rough idea of what I'm dealing with.

Also what protocol would you best use to upload the configuration?

Appreciate any help.

Thanks!

[Philip D'Ath]

Does the project have to use SNMP?  How about telnet or SSH?

Is this perhaps an IOS-XE device you want to control?  Have you considered using the REST API instead?

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/routers/csr1000/software/restapi/restapi/RESTAPIintro.html

If you must use SNMP, you will probably have to maintain the master config on your server, and then trigger the IOS device to download the new config.

http://www.ciscozine.com/send-cisco-commands-via-snmp/

[Lombravia]

SNMP is not required at all. I have not looked too much at other solutions, but apart from uploading configuration I also want to basically pull the equivalent of each show command, and having to pull configuration files and parse plain text seems very annoying, unless you were thinking of a different way?

It is not IOS-XE. Didn't know about the REST API, would be great to have.

Will take a look at the SNMP link. Thanks!

[Philip D'Ath]

Using telnet and parsing the text output is going to be the best way then.

[Lombravia]

Any particular reason SNMP would be insufficient or inferior? Is it lacking the objects?

[Philip D'Ath]

It can't do as many things.