An approach is provided in which an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) system is established in a cloud that includes a plurality of virtual machines. Each of the plurality of virtual machines are allocated to one or more of a plurality of datastores based on one or more user inputs. Next, one of a plurality of priorities are assigned to each of the plurality of virtual machines based on the one or more of the plurality of datastores to which each of the plurality of virtual machines is allocated. In turn, the virtual machines are recovered in the cloud in an order determined, at least in part, by their assigned one of the plurality of priorities.