Your IT staff needs to be able to ensure that in an emergency they can get critical business applications up and running, as well as all the connected systems on which those apps rely, Kusnetzky says. "It isn't just the applications, but also the complete configuration that the application is used to running on. It all needs to be there or it will require a reconfiguration of the processes or the application itself."

The only way to know if it will all works as designed is to test it, push it and test it some more, he says.

"Just copying the application somewhere and just turning it on won't necessarily make it available to your company's workers," Kusnetzky says.

This is an instance where virtualization could be helpful, because if the workload is running inside one or more virtual machines, then they are not reliant on hardware differences within your disaster recovery strategy, according to Kusnetzky. For those same reasons, using virtual storage could be beneficial.

At the same time, virtualization won't solve all related disaster recovery complications. "Virtualization can help, but like anything else, it's not a panacea," he says. "It's just a tool. You need to do other things as well."