As explained in Chapter 1, Planning and Key Concepts – What Not to Forget, with virtualization technology, the server, including the operating system, applications, patches, and data are all encapsulated into a single image or virtual server. This image or virtual server can be backed up to an offsite DR datacentre and restored on another virtual host in a matter of minutes.
With more SharePoint implementations utilizing virtualization, it is important that a SharePoint DR strategy includes steps to take advantage of the backup and recovery capabilities of the virtualization technology your company has purchased. In this chapter, we will cover backup and recovery tools for the two most popular virtualization platforms, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere 5.