Server OS Selection:

• SUSE LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 15

Your version of vCenter or VMware ESXi host may not offer an option for SLES 15. If not, that's okay, just choose SLES 12 instead.  There's a VMware knowledgebase article somewhere, look it up if you want to read the same thing I just told you.

Boot Options / Firmware

• BIOS

In VMware, under the VM Options --> Boot Options, there is an option called Firmware.  You can choose either "BIOS" or "EFI".   My personal preference is to use BIOS.  I suppose you could argue either way, and I've used both. I have found from personal experience that the toolsets on Linux that support EFI are extremely limited compared to what's available with a standard BIOS. For example, if you ever need to resize a partition, the tools are not available using EFI. So I feel that the BIOS option is the best and most straightforward option.

Also please note that the partitioning I outline in this document depends on the BIOS option. If you happen to use EFI instead, you'll need to modify the disk partitioning accordingly.

Processors

• Select 2 Processors/CPU's

Don't go crazy on the processors. Two (2) is usually adequate. There are volumes of web articles discouraging you from assigning excessive numbers of processors as it may have an opposite effect on performance.

Memory / RAM

• For smaller systems, 8GB is likely adequate.
• Scale up for larger systems. It is not unusual to have 16-32GB RAM on a large production server.

It's not critical to get this right, just make your best guess.  You can monitor and adjust as needed.  If you're accustomed to running GroupWise on NetWare or an older SLES 11 server, what you'll soon find out is that SLES 15 and GroupWise 18 consume quite a bit more memory than before. I don't care what the documentation makes you believe, you're not going to be running GroupWise on 4GB RAM. Accept this and just deal with it.

Disk Controller:

• Disk Controller 1:  Paravirtual
• Disk Controller 2:  Paravirtual

Using separate controllers isolates the OS disk activity from GroupWise, improving performance. Paravirtual is the best option for performance because it is working much closer to the hardware than other options.

** Do not install SLES using a different controller, then change it to Paravirtual. This will likely render the server unbootable and the disk partitions may not be read the same. **

Disk Configuration

• Disk 1: 100GB / Thin Partition.  Assign to the first controller (Disk 0:1)
• Disk 2: Allocate enough space for GroupWise data plus 25-30% for growth.
  • Assign to the second controller (Disk 1:1).
  • Choose the partitioning type:
    • Thin partitioning is adequate in many cases, especially small to medium systems.
    • Thick-provisioned eager-zeroed disk partitioning is better for systems with larger user bases and heavier demands.
  • If you have different tiers of storage (fast, slow, near, far, SSD, spinny disks, whatever), put the VMDK file in a Datastore that features the fastest storage available.

If you have a larger and heavily utilized system, and squeezing every last bit of performance out of the drive is critical to a happy user base, consider the following:

• A thick-provisioned eager-zeroing disk will write data faster than a thin-provisioned disk.
• A thin-provisioned disk exhibits the same performance as a lazy-zeroed thick-provisioned disk.  Because of overprovisioning, thin provisioning will cause problems when users approach their maximum storage capacity.

Network Adapter:

• Choose the VMNETX Network Adapter (This is the default)
• Select the correct VM Network that your server should be connected to. 

You may have a more complicated network setup than this. However, most setups that involve dedicated ISCSI SAN's for storage or multi-pathing for redundancy are done at the VMWare host level, not the individual VM. So generally speaking, the above settings are suitable for the majority of configurations.