VMware vSphere experts know that the ESX architecture has a critical advantage over other hypervisors like Xen, KVM, and Hyper-V. Instead of relying on general-purpose third-party device drivers, VMware ESX comes with hardened, stress-tested drivers — ready for your toughest enterprise workloads.
Windows deserves applause for reliability improvements in recent years. Unfortunately, the most reliable Windows design will never be able to counteract the damage that can be inflicted by a misbehaving device driver. In fact, take a look at this slide from a Mark Russinovich TechEd session where he makes the point that the majority of Windows blue screens (BSODs) are caused by third-party drivers...