A system and method include assigning, by an identifier management system of a virtual computing system, a hypervisor agnostic identifier to a virtual machine. The system and method also include creating a mapping of the hypervisor agnostic identifier to a first hypervisor specific identifier of the virtual machine, including storing the mapping in a database, and updating the mapping in response to a second hypervisor specific identifier being associated with the virtual machine. The updated mapping maps the hypervisor agnostic identifier to the second hypervisor specific identifier. The system and method further include making available the hypervisor agnostic identifier for use by other elements of the virtual computing system instead of the first hypervisor specific identifier and the second hypervisor specific identifier. The first hypervisor specific identifier and the second hypervisor specific identifier are hypervisor specific, while the hypervisor agnostic identifier is not hypervisor specific.