[jiggawatts]

Yes. VMware's ESXi kernel was unbelievably rock-solid compared to other similar systems. Fantastic resilience against even hardware faults. I've heard that there was a culture of "doing things the right way" there.

Meanwhile in the same org, the group doing their GUI kept adding band-aids to a broken mess for years.

[jeffbee]

ESXi is a gem that few appreciate. It's been quietly chugging along as my home server hypervisor since 4.1 (2010). And it's free.