Data center resources have traditionally been underutilized while drawing enormous amounts of power and taking up valuable floorspace. Virtualization has been a positive evolutionary step in the data center, driving consolidation of these resources to maximize utilization and power savings, as well as to simplify management and maintenance.

There are many entrants into the server virtualization market, including VMWare, Microsoft, Oracle, Citrix, and others; so there is a good chance that you are either running virtualization in a test or development capacity or have taken the leap toward a production virtualized data center. With all of the benefits of virtualization comes a wholesale change in the way that you must plan for backup, restore, and recovery. It is important that when planning consolidation projects, these important business-continuance applications are considered, as well as the type of storage needed to host them.