Consolidating physical servers at the DR site eliminates the need for one-to-one mirrored physical machines and can deliver savings in power and cooling, management and maintenance. The portability of virtual machines also means that failback can occur to the original location or to a new one: either a virtual machine or a physical system with dissimilar hardware.

Another advantage is the ability to test DR more efficiently. Regular DR testing--confirming failover and failback processes, and testing documentation--is necessary to ensure DR preparedness. In server virtualization environments, DR tests can be performed on a virtual machine without affecting another machine or the primary production system. Tests can be run in more realistic situations (during peak hours, with peak-time staff and on actual DR hardware) without impacting normal operations and with less risk should something go awry.