1. A method of persisting SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) variable values associated with SNMP object IDs for an SNMP managed network element comprising: a network element implementing a generic persist operation; wherein implementing the generic persist operation comprises: defining, through one or more user-specified commands in conjunction with the generic persist operation, at least one object ID for which a value is to be persisted; based on the one or more user-specified commands, determining that persistent storage should occur for values of at least one object ID; based on the presence of a wild card in said one or more user-specified commands, determining that persistent storage should occur for values of all child objects of a set of child objects hierarchically depending from the at least one object ID; storing the values of the at least one object ID into non-volatile storage located within the network element, wherein the SNMP object comprises a group object instance and the SNMP objects are represented using a hierarchical structure and the group object instance comprises a first SNMP object and all SNMP objects hierarchically depending from said first SNMP object.