Thanks for the more detailed explanation Matt. I actually have that book on my desk, even more anxious to read it now! 
I will say that I did follow HP's guidelines for storage and Vsphere, and I tested the paths by manually unplugging network cables to make sure the other path stayed up, no problems. Maybe something about the driver issue scenario caused a different kind of problem.
So now you have me thinking about clustering two of our database vm's, I will have to investigate that more.
Would FT vm's have helped in this situation? I believe they are limited to one vcpu so that really wouldn't work anyway I guess...
Kevin