@Dashrender While true, it's both a funding problem and a hardware limitation on what I have to work with. With that said however, I have disproven the fact that it is a dynamic memory problem as the data translation uses all 16GB of RAM while running the job but as soon as it's done, allocation drops substantially without the OS even knowing the difference. Also, running a second translation job this time using an iSCSI LUN that I setup on my new Synology NAS (just a small 10GB LUN to store and write data to as part of this test) is running much faster than with the local storage, but I'm using consumer level drives in the host machine as opposed to WD Reds in the Synology NAS. It's a very noticeable difference.

And here is a write up from "The VAR Guy": http://thevarguy.com/virtualization-applications-and-technologies/031014/embargo-monday-march-10-8-am-est-xen-44-open-source-vir

Thanks @scottalanmiller and @psx_defector

IOPS are the biggest concern really. But without anything like a database which really needs them, RAID 6 might be more than enough. Exchange wouldn't be a big concern as it is not IOPS heavy. RAID 10 is far better tuned for heavy writes, but if reads are the vast majority, RAID 6 will keep right up.