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[mdjmcnally]

You would be real hard pressed to recover from a linux console on ESXi as there is no linux console on ESXi.

What you would need to do is have a backup of the VM running on the box, then reinstall the ESXi from scratch, and then import the VM to the rebuilt box.

 

[Vanilla]

I'd stick with RAID 5.

I normally go for RAID 6 in systems with larger (500GB+), slower drives where you're more likely to suffer from a dual failure because of trhe really long rebuild times. The rebuild on 146GB drives is ok as they're small capacity wise and fast.

You also have the affect of double parity write on RAID 6, depending on your IO rat ethis may take valuable system resources.

 

[J1nxy]

For VM backups try something like this

http://www.esxpress.com/pricing.php

You might also want to take a butchers at Virtual Iron as it includes backup etc out the box.

But to be honest your probably going to hit a memory and disk I/O problems. You don't say if the SAS disks are 10K or 15K but maybe a pair of smaller 36 or 72s for the OS would be a better buy and use the 146s for data. If you go the virtual iron route it boots from USB dongle.

SQL as you hopefully know is a memory and resource hog and while I don't know what resource type requirements your SQL installs have your still going to be pushing your luck running that many on a single box and looking to do other things as well. If you can get away with VMs then one or 2 instances per machine would make more sense on the basis you can shut down any which are being used at that stage to free up resources for the rest.