the units your looking at are ok. I dont use either. Its difficult to comment as we do distribute both. However both your brands are now used by both diy and pro installer. Id call the support lines and see which support you better pre sale tbh.
plus this sounds a bit blind date cilla...
960h is basically widescreen d1.
AHD is pretty much open source analogue hd, cvi and tvi are similar but not open iirc
hd-sdi is a digital version but needs good coax. All of the above analouge will work past operating distance but loose quality where as digital just stops
i would agree that vSphere is better it does seem expensive just for a cctv vs.
Id also agree that it allows much better resource management
But i use vbox for all my vm's and last time i used VMware stuff was back at v2
as i said reminder in the morning. Assuming landing and all rooms of the hallway are protected then its not really a security issue but imo should always be fitted. In my experience post isnt an issue 99.9% of the time