A generation identifier is provided having a value established upon generating a new virtual machine configuration context or a snapshot of a virtual machine configuration context. The generation identifier is configured to be sampled in order to indicate whether the sampled generation is a latest generation. To use the generation identifier, a service or application persists the generation identifier upon resuming or initiating operation. During normal operation or replay, the persisted generation identifier is compared to the generation identifier sampled from a location associated with the virtual machine configuration context on which the service or application is being run before performing a requested process or committing to a transaction. When the sampled generation identifier is different than the persisted generation identifier, the service or application knows that it is running a time-shifted operation such as from a snapshot replay.