Herein are computerized techniques for generation, costing/scoring, optimal selection, and reporting of intermediate configurations for a datacenter change plan. In an embodiment, a computer receives a current configuration of a datacenter and a target configuration. New configurations are generated based on the current configuration. A cost function is applied to calculate a cost of each new configuration based on measuring a logical difference between the new configuration and the target configuration. A particular new configuration is selected that has a least cost. When the particular configuration satisfies the target configuration, the datacenter is reconfigured based on the particular configuration. Otherwise, this process is (e.g. iteratively) repeated with the particular configuration instead used as the current configuration. In embodiments, new configurations are randomly, greedily, and/or manually generated. In an embodiment, new configurations obey design invariants that constrain which changes and/or configurations are attainable.