Configuration Comparison Automation with Claude

What you will be able to do

• Plan a configuration comparison for cloud-to-cloud, physical-to-cloud and cloud-to-physical migrations, including what must be proven and what cannot be compared
• Collect running configuration from F5 (iControl REST and tmsh), Citrix NetScaler (NITRO API), Radware Alteon, other load balancers (Anaya LB), Cisco APIC and Terraform state with read-only credentials
• Normalise every platform into one canonical Pydantic model with provenance and explicit unknowns
• Use Claude Code, the Claude Agent SDK and MCP servers so that Claude plans and explains while deterministic Python computes the diff
• Generate severity-classified difference reports, Claude-written explanations and remediation steps grounded in the report
• Gate every consequential action behind GitHub pull request review and a ServiceNow change record, with a full audit trail of prompts, tool calls and decisions

Table of contents

1. 1Configuration comparison as a migration discipline
2. 2Setting up Claude Code, the Agent SDK and MCP for the workflow
3. 3Collecting configuration from every platform
4. 4Normalising into a canonical configuration model
5. 5Migration planning with Claude
6. 6The deterministic diff engine
7. 7Claude explains the differences
8. 8Guardrails, approvals and audit for configuration comparison
9. 9Scheduling, Terraform plan checks and GitHub Actions
10. 10Capstone: end-to-end physical-to-cloud comparison