A method of identifying historical snapshots for a virtual machine (VM) is provided. Some example operations include receiving a request for a historical snapshot of a VM, the request indicating an ID for the VM. A detection is made that the ID for the VM in the request received is a new ID assigned to a VM. A determination is made whether the new ID corresponds to a newly created VM or an existing VM that has been previously registered using a previous ID, wherein the determining includes accessing a property of the VM including a use case identifier associated with an instant recovery request for a specific VM. Based on identifying that the new ID corresponds to a newly created VM, a new VM Group (VMG) object is created for the newly created VM corresponding to the new ID.