A remote agent for performing a backup of a virtual machine includes a persistent storage that stores backup policies and a backup manager that obtains a backup generation request for the virtual machine and, in response to the backup generation request, performs a component validation analysis of a production host that hosts the virtual machine to identify a backup state of the production host; makes a first determination, based on the backup state of the production host, that the production host is in a backup-enabled state; and, in response to the first determination, generates a backup of the virtual machine, using the backup policies, for storage in a backup storage; and validates that the backup of the virtual machine is stored in the backup storage based on a reduced size representation of the backup and a reduced size representation of a copy of the backup in the backup storage.