EXPERT RESPONSE
The most flexible use of virtualization technology in a disaster recovery is to have a solid virtual production infrastructure. It is easier to move servers from a virtual environment to another virtual environment offsite than it is to move from a physical server environment to a virtual server environment offsite.
Virtual SAN storage is especially helpful when moving your virtual environment offsite. Not only can you replicate your data, but if your virtual machines are stored on the SAN as well, you can replicate them to the offsite location. This saves you some time in a disaster recovery scenario. For some different approaches to a virtualized iSCSI SAN, take a look at the following companies:
EqualLogic
Lefthand Networks
SANMelody
If you do have a physical environment, you can still use server virtualization technology for disaster recovery. There are many physical-to-virtual converters that you can use to make a physical server a virtual server. Do this for your offsite hot site and you could save some money on hardware costs associated with the hot site. For some P2V software, take a look at the following products:
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