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Hi Fejf,
I'd go for VC but since I can manage ESX3i without it (just takes more manual work); we'll just save that money.
By the way this forum is great; 2 helpful replies within 10 minutes!!!
We're just starting off with 2 servers for now:
HP DL385 G2 with 2x2.6Ghz dualcore Opterons and 8GB of RAM. 3 Guests: Windows 2003 WSUS patch server, Windwos 2008 Longhorn for platform testing, Windows Vista for platform testing
HP DL385 G2 with 2x2.6Ghz dualcore Opterons and 4GB of RAM. 2 Guests: Red Hat ES staging server (web applications), Windows 2003 with SQL 2005 and MOSS (Sharepoint) for testing
As you can see most of the guests are just for testing. The only production guest is the WSUS patch server and that's not exactly going to affect the business if it goes down for a week. I'd love to get ESX 3.5 Foundation but at a cost for $1,500 per server versus $500...I can't easily justify it.
2) You can use the VI Client to manage the ESX3i-Server but you don't have the possibility to log into the Service Console (the Linux Management part of ESX3). E.g. if the management demon (hostd) is stuck in some way there is the possibility to log into the linux service console and restart the service - you can't do that with esx3i. Another example is backup software: if you use agents inside the virtual machines there is no problem but you have to pay for a agent in each virtual machine. With ESX3 there is the possibility to install a backup agent (see backup software compatibility list) in the service console which means that you pay for one backup agents to backup multiple machines.
4) "cheap storage": by the way: you can use a standard pc with linux and nfs as storage - it's not the best way to go but it's cheap
