Virtual redundancy for active-standby cloud applications is disclosed herein. A virtual machine (“VM”) placement scheduling system is disclosed herein. The system can compute, for each standby VM of a plurality of available standby VMs, a minimum required placement overlap delta to meet an entitlement assurance rate (“EAR”) threshold. The system can compute a minimum number of available VM slots for activating each standby VM to meet the EAR threshold. For each standby VM of a given application, the system can filter out any server of a plurality of servers that does not meet criteria. If a given server meets the criteria, the system can add the given server to a candidate list; sort, in descending order, the candidate list by the minimum required placement overlap delta and the number of available virtual machine slots; and select, from the candidate list of servers, a candidate server from atop the candidate list.