If anyone is interested

[Steve Saporito]

Here are a couple of articles I wrote about coding with the modulus operator to distribute users and DBs during Exchange migrations:

1. My Modulus Obsession
2. My Modulus Obsession Part II

Let me know what you think.  Thanks.

Steven

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[Michael B. Smith]

Curious: in what way did your result differ from the output of the sizing spreadsheet?

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[Steve Saporito]

In terms of outcome I don't think there is a difference.  There were a few other factors that drove me to write my own scripts.  For brevity I didn't list everything in the post.  However, I'll mention them informally here.

1. The actual design had much fewer drives and DBs then had been prescribed by the calculator.  If I were to use the calculator scripts I'd have to review and refactor them anyhow.  And, considering they don't even come out properly formatted, I knew I'd be going down an obsessive compulsive rabbit hole.
2. Not all the scripts were even generating.  I was getting a lot of VBA macro errors.  That may well have been a result of security boundaries in my environment.  Honestly, I'm not entirely sure, but the prospect of having to reverse engineer and/or troubleshoot the macros was a big factor.
3. The underlying integration with the HW vendors cli interface.  I've done that part a couple of times. Previously with HP's ACUCLI, this time it was Dell's PercCLI utility. To guarantee formatting with the right labels and the right disk #'s I wanted them integrated with the diskpart commands.
4. I didn't even want to use diskpart anymore.  Honestly, I had been writing these types of scripts myself just for the control factor since Exchange 2010.  As of 2013 and PowerShell 5.x I was using the cmdlets from the Storage module instead.  So it was partly out of preference and partly for better integration.
5. Any time you re-invent the wheel it better be quick enough to make it worth it.  This wasn't that hard, it only took a few hours. Which, at the time seemed more appealing than troubleshooting the macros.
6. I'm going to post it in a second article, but in the enterprise the distribution doesn't actually work well.  Speaking of the control factor, when it came time to change the distribution to better suit the particular environment, I had complete control and was able to do so by only changing a single variable.

Of course, despite all this it was an opportunity to demonstrate another modulus use case.

Hope this doesn't sound crazy, let me know what you think.  Thanks.

Steven

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[Michael B. Smith]

The important thing is it works for your needs. 😊

 

Thanks for sharing!

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[Steve Saporito]

Thanks for reading!

There was one other thing I remembered! I automated BitLocker so the drives were encrypted straight away. 

Thanks again.

Steven

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