In the past, BC was the first driver of virtualization initiative; virtualization not only helps in server consolidation and in driving down costs across IT organizations, but can also improve availability, resiliency, and recoverability for business-critical applications and services.

There are three key features of virtualization that lead to better-managed BC:

• Consolidation: Server consolidation means doing more with less. You're reducing your physical footprint, which also means you can streamline your DR plans and standardize your recovery process. 
• Hardware independence: This means being able to recover onto any x86 hardware.  So, you have the flexibility to buy different servers for your recovery site, or even fewer servers. Continuing to virtualize your production site will free up additional machines that can then be moved over to your recovery site.
• Encapsulation: Because virtualization captures everything about a server onto just a few files on a disk, the real benefit here is mobility; the ability to move your VMs wherever you want.  You can back them up in the same way you currently protect your other files. You can also replicate them to your DR site, so that they will be available when you need to recover from an outage.

VMware provides a holistic approach to protecting your IT environment and all applications running on the vSphere platform from a variety of factors that can cause application downtime, including unplanned events like server failures and even planned events such as server maintenance. These solutions provide a simple, cost-effective protection with a common solution for all your applications and services. 

The VMware BC related solutions cover the following:

• Local availability: There are products and technologies that protect applications against the downtime of individual hosts. This includes vSphere HA and FT for unplanned downtime, as well as vMotion and Storage vMotion for planned downtime. More information will be provided in Chapter 13, Advanced Availability in vSphere 6.5.
• Data protection: There are solutions to back up entire VMs, including OS, application binaries, and application data, in a simple non-disruptive manner. A third-party solution can use VMware Storage APIs for data protection that enables native VM backup. More information will be provided in Chapter 14, Data and Workloads Protection.
• Disaster recovery: vSphere Replication is an exciting addition to the vSphere platform, providing a cost-efficient and simple way to implement a VM based replication. For DR orchestration, vCenter Site Recovery Manager leverages vSphere and vSphere Replication (or storage-based replication) to protect applications against site failures and to streamline planned migrations.
• Disaster avoidance: The vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) is a configuration option, introduced in vSphere 5, that allows for the use of stretched clusters.