Cisco ACI Upgrade Automation with Claude

What you will be able to do

• Describe the Cisco-recommended ACI upgrade sequence: release selection, pre-upgrade validation, APIC cluster first, then switch groups, then post-checks
• Build a Python client for the APIC REST API that discovers the fabric, runs the pre-upgrade validator and returns typed JSON
• Use Claude Code, the Claude Agent SDK and an MCP server to plan upgrade groups and maintenance windows as schema-validated structured output
• Create firmware and maintenance policies with deterministic Python and Ansible only after a human approves the plan in a GitHub pull request and a ServiceNow change
• Produce pre and post upgrade evidence, a comparison report, a pause or rollback decision and a complete audit trail

Table of contents

1. 1The Cisco ACI upgrade process and where upgrades go wrong
2. 2Claude Code, Agent SDK and MCP setup for the ACI workflow
3. 3Fabric discovery through the APIC REST API
4. 4Pre-upgrade validation and explained failures
5. 5Upgrade planning with structured outputs
6. 6Firmware staging, backups and the change request
7. 7Guardrails, approvals and audit for fabric upgrades
8. 8Executing the APIC cluster and switch group upgrades
9. 9Post-upgrade verification, reporting and rollback decisions
10. 10Capstone: end-to-end ACI fabric upgrade with evidence bundle