Patent ID: 8214483

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by a computing system executing a service portal, a customer selection of a continuous availability subscription service via the service portal, wherein the service portal comprises a web site independent of an internal network of a customer; storing configuration data of the customer and client activity data of the customer in at least one data store based on the customer selection, wherein the configuration data relates to at least hardware and application requirements of client machines within the internal network of the customer, and the client activity data comprises one or more snapshots of virtual disks associated with the client machines; receiving, by the computing system executing the service portal, notification of a catastrophic event in the internal network; and in response to receiving the notification of the catastrophic event, performing the following by the computing system: retrieving the configuration data and the client activity data from the at least one data store; allocating at least one host machine included in a server farm to host at least one virtual machine for the customer, wherein prior to being allocated to host the at least one virtual machine, the at least one host machine is unassociated with the internal network of the customer; and instantiating the at least one virtual machine for the customer based on the configuration data and the client activity data.