nanochan1
So you have been a forum member for about two years and in that time you have asked two questions.
1. Why did the VM's shutdown when the network was taken down. HA was the answer.
2. Here is a vague description of "system" I need to build tell me what to buy?
As Gregg did the best to actually give you some answers I will try to give you some questions.
1. Concurrent active users might be up to 10k - Since you said web servers and DB servers what is the nature of the user's use?
If it is something like an auction site where lots and lots of refresh requests (webserver to DB read calls and back) that need to be answered in real time, the DB and possible Web server demands are much higher.
If it is a popular forum site where it is a solid mix of read and writes and searching, but latency of a half second to one second for the DB to process requests at peak is not going to be noticed then the demands are DB intensive within a range of performance, but the web server load is moderate (image compression could change that) to light.
2. What type of Web server - IIS, Websphere (which variety), Apache, other?
3. What type of DB - MS SQL, MySQL, DB2, Oracle, other?
3. Storage - for HA you need some sort of SAN or Virtual SAN, beyond that too many variables to give even a good question.
So you come here and ask for the moon and the stars and then bitch that no one is helping you and that maybe VMware was a mistake,
I would agree that no one (Gregg is the exception) is helping you because you are not helping us to help you.
I hope you can take this as positive criticism versus just plain criticism.