Archiving an old backup

[marius roma]

On a NAS used as a Veeam B&R repository I have an old backup of a group of VM that do not exist anymore.
The backup have 20 restore points.
In order to save space I need to reduce che number of restore point and archive the backup.
I need to keep ate least 1 recovery point of all the VM for historical reasons.
How can I reduce the number of restore points? Can I run the backup even if the VMs do not exist anymore?
Once reduced the number of restore points can I convert the backup in VeeamZip on anything else in order to keep only one restore point of the VMs?
Is there any other way to get the results I need (keeping a copy of the VMs and saving space)?
Regards
Marius

[nielsengelen]

In regards to creating a VeeamZIP you'll have to restore them first and then zip them so maybe you should just go for this method as it will read all the restore points, do the restore and you'll have the VM's.

[Shestakov]

Hello Marius,
To make it clear, you have 20 backup files, it`s not a single backup of 20 VMs. Is that correct?
If so, is that a single chain of 20 backups or several chains? What backup method was used(forward/reverse incremental)?
You can delete the whole chain via GUI or delete one or several restore points from the chain.

Can I run the backup even if the VMs do not exist anymore?

Yes you can, but only existing VMs will be backed up. Older backups may be deleted by retention though.

If you want to keep VM state of the day when not full but incremental backup had been taken, you can restore the VM, make a new backup/VeeamZIP, delete the VM and old backups.
Thanks!

[foggy]

You can also do a backup copy out of that chain to get a full backup with the latest VMs state. You would need a dummy backup job mapped to that chain for that.