One embodiment of the present invention is a system including: (a) plural virtualization systems configured in a cluster; (b) storage accessible to each virtualization system of the cluster, wherein for each virtual machine operative in a virtualization system of the cluster, the storage maintains a representation of virtual machine state that includes at least a description of a hardware system virtualized and an image of virtualized memory state for the virtual machine; and (c) a failover system that, responsive to an interruption of, or on, a particular one of the virtualization systems, transitions at least one affected virtual machine to another virtualization system of the cluster and resumes computations of the transitioned virtual machine based on state encoded by a corresponding one of the virtual machine states represented in the storage.