1. A method in a system of virtual machines (VMs) comprising: designating a given virtual application in a virtualization environment comprising the system of VMs, the virtual application supported by a group of VMs; assessing the given virtual application for disaster recovery (DR) protection, including: accessing a resource consumption history for each constituent VM in the group of VMs that support the given virtual application, the resource consumption history comprising a plurality of usage metrics corresponding to a plurality of resources used by each VM in the group of VMs, each usage metric comprising a plurality of data samples representative of usage levels of a resource corresponding to the usage metric; producing one or more metrics indicative of a change in a cost of downtime of the given virtual application; assessing a plurality of criteria based on the resource consumption history of the VMs in the group of VMs that support the given virtual application and the change in cost of downtime of the virtual application; designating the given virtual application as a candidate for DR protection based on an assessment of the plurality of criteria; and activating DR protection on one or more of the virtual applications designated as candidates for DR protection.