Chris, you first post said "in order for ESX to run at peak performance", which is why people have leaned towards R10.
If you really want "space" with some data protection because "space is going to be more important than performance" then a R5 is probably best. With six disks one set will give you the most space and spindles.
Your next question will be about partitioning. That is do you create one large VMFS file system or more. For one its going to be about 2.5Tb so you are going to have to use a larger block size than default. For various reasons I would go with three partitions, two 1Tb ones to spread you VMs accross and the remaining space into one for templates and ISOs. (best practices for VMFS sizing is a whole can of worms)
Rodos
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