We definitely want to use vMotion. Can be used without shared storage, correct?
Yes, it's possible since 5.1, but there are a few things to keep in mind. It's basically a combination of storage vMotion, transferring the VM disks from one storage device to another and a regular vMotion, transferring a live running VM from one host's memory to another.
As such it's nowhere as dynamic as a normal vMotion alone, since copying VM disk data can take a long time. There is also no DRS support.
You can read on some more here: http://wahlnetwork.com/2012/11/21/leveraging-vmwares-enhanced-shared-nothing-vmotion/
Does the CPU need to be the same model? For example, would all need to have Intel Xeon E5 2609 v2 CPU?
No, the basic requirement to transfer a live running OS is that both, source and destination host support the same CPU instruction sets. Exact model, Mhz clock rate, cache size etc. are irrelevant as long as the CPU instruction sets are identical. So no, they don't have to be the exact same model.
Additionally, you can enable Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) on a cluster of hosts with the same CPU vendor, which allows you to set the lowest common denominator of a CPU generation between different hosts. For example, the Xeon E5 2609 v2 you mentioned is an Ivy Bridge generation CPU. If you add a Sandy Bridge generation Xeon you would set the EVC mode to Sandy Bridge, as it's the oldest generation in your cluster and containing all common instruction sets that are also present in the newer generation Ivy Bridge host. If you add a
host with Haswell generation CPUs, you would set the EVC mode to Ivy Bridge respectively.
EVC will mask the newer instructions to VMs to ensure they can be live-migrated to all hosts.
You would need to keep the AMD host out of your cluster but that doesn't really make any difference in your case since vMotion will never work between AMD and Intel and you can't use VMware HA because you're lacking shared storage. Just be aware that VMs on the AMD host will never be able to migrate to the other hosts without downtime via Enhanced vMotion.
Check these articles for details about EVC:
VMware KB: Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support
VMware KB: EVC and CPU Compatibility FAQ
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