Patent ID: 8230256

Claim:
A method comprising: replicating data from a first storage device to a second storage device, wherein the replicating is performed prior to occurrence of a fault at a physical computer cluster; configuring at least one virtual machine file at a backup computer, wherein the configuring is performed prior to occurrence of the fault, a software application is hosted by the physical computer cluster, the software application accesses the data on the first storage device, and the at least one virtual machine file includes a representation of one or more resources of the physical computer cluster for operating the software application; in response to occurrence of the fault, generating a virtual machine using the virtual machine file(s), wherein the virtual machine is generated at the backup computer, after the generating, the backup computer system is operable to execute the virtual machine, and the virtual machine is operable to execute an instance of the software application; in response to occurrence of the fault, executing the virtual machine at the backup computer, and executing the instance of the software application by the virtual machine, wherein the virtual machine uses the representation of the resource(s), and the instance of the software application uses the replicated data on the second storage device; and in response to the instance of the software application being executed by the virtual machine, replicating data from the second storage to the first storage.