In an embodiment, a guest operating system (OS) running on a virtual machine (VM) detects a VM migration, where the embodiment comprises storing, by the guest OS, a VM identifier (VMID) provided by the VM and a first host identifier (HID) provided by a host computer system in a computer memory. The embodiment also comprises determining, by the guest OS, that the VM performs migrations that are transparent to the guest OS. The embodiment further comprises detecting, by the guest OS, that the VM has been migrated based on a comparison of the first HID to a second HID provided to the guest OS in response to an HID request from the guest OS.