A method, system and computer program product are disclosed for recovery in a virtualized environment using remote direct memory access (RDMA). In one embodiment, the method comprises operating a virtual computer system on a physical computer system, and the virtual system maintains in a memory area a record of a state of the virtual system. In this method, when defined error conditions occur on the virtual system, RDMA is used to pull the record of the state of the virtual system from that memory area onto a standby computer. This record on the standby computer is used to re-initialize the virtual computer. Embodiments of the invention provide methods that provide a very fast recovery from a virtual machine fault or error, while requiring much fewer resources than standard approaches. In embodiments of the invention, one spare real computer system can be used for backing up several virtual systems.