Embodiments relate to systems and methods for a self-moving operating system installation in cloud-based network. A guest operating system can be instantiated in a cloud-based host environment to support a set of virtual machines. The operating system can be configured with resources in the kernel to detect and manage the identity of the cloud in which the operating system is installed, as well as to interrogate potentially new target host clouds to determine the configuration settings required to move or copy the guest operating system to that target. The resulting mobility of the guest operating system affords the ability to be self-moving, and an administrator or other user can simply specify a desired target cloud to host the operating system without a need to manually configure APIs or other resources.