Embodiments of the present invention are directed to a method and system for draining or aborting IO requests of a failed system prior to restarting or recovering an application in virtual environments. The method includes detecting, within an electronic system, an application error condition of an application executing on a virtual machine and determining an application restart target. The method further includes sending an input/output (IO) request drain command to a virtual IO server operable to provide storage to the virtual machine and receiving a signal that the IO requests have been drained. The drain command is operable to drain IO requests issued from the application. The application can then be restarted or recovered.