Benchmarks for our workload (all vmware, exchange, sql) shows minimal to no difference between RAID 50 and RAID 6. We have converted all of our arrays to RAID 6 per Dell's recommendations.

We run VDI off the hybrid SAN's and see very good performance. The Acclerated RAID 6 is suppose to move frequently used 'Hot' blocks to SSD for faster response and move less frequently used 'Cold' blocks to HD. We have a few PS6010XVS (mixture of 8 100GB SSD and 8 450GB 15krpm SAS HD) and PS6110XS (mixture of 7 400gb SSD and 17 600GB 10krpm SAS HD) that we use for OS volumes. Dell includes 7 or 8 SSD's and uses what they call accelerated RAID 6 for arrays with a mixture of SSD and HD's. We do also have PS61 with 3TB drives as well as units with SSD's. Would've like to use 4TB but it seems the PS5k and PS4k series can only support up to 2TB drives. We also have a number of older PS5000E's with 1TB drives that will reach end of support from Dell soon, we plan on installing some WD RE4 2TB drives in those. We've had to have a controller replaced under warranty, dell didn't give us any issue about not having dell certified drives in it. We have bought non Dell/Equallogic Seagate 2TB drives for our PS4000E that came with 1TB drives, been using it that way for 2 years now without any issues.

Download equallogic firmware