one of the benefits of things like docker is creating a very lightweight configuration, and keeping it separate from your data.

ive setup things so i only need to rsync my data and configs. everything else can be rebuilt. i would classify this as 'disaster recovery'.

some people reeeeally want that old school, bare-metal restore. which i have to admit, i stopped attempting years ago. i dont need the 'high availability' of entire system imaging for my personal shit.

rsync is your friend. its ubiquitous.

The fact that it's a "single board" computer, specifically, is mildly irrelevant, imo; just follow standard backup practices. The only way the type of computer really comes into question is whether or not it has adequate resources to run whatever backup solution that you choose. For my usecase, Borg works great, but choose whatever solution fits your requirements. The "simplest", and lightest solution is probably rsync, but that may leave a lot to be desired.

It might not be applicable to you but in many cases single board computers are used where there is minimal changes in files in day to day basis. For example when used for displaying stuff. For such cases, it is useful to know that after installing all the required stuff, the SD card can be turned into read only mode. This prolongs its life exponentially. Temporary files can still be generated in the RAM and if needed, you can push them to an external storage/FTP through a cron job or something. I have built a digital display with weather/photos/news where beyond the initial install, everything is pulled from the internet. I'm working towards implementing what I've suggested above.

Like I do any other system. rsnapshot nightly to backup server.

There are options good and bad.

I’d back up just the dockers. The OS can be rebuilt easily enough. Yes Rsync the data

Or. Shut it down, pull the SD card, put it in another computer and rip it as an image, Full bootable backup

I would do the first not the second.

I wrote a bash script a while back that uses sshfs to mount an ssh server to the filesystem, then uses dd to write /dev/mmcblk0 to it as hostname-date.img and finally unmount the ssh server. Cron job runs that daily.

I run that on each of my rpis. (just one rn, but theres been as many as 4 going).

Any time I have an issue, be that my fault or not, I can just pull the sd card and write the last .img to it directly.

There's some extra stuff in there too: it checks for the dependancy sshfs and installs it if missing (for deploying to a new system without reconfiguring), cleans up backups older than x days, logging, and the ability to write the log file as a test instead of the whole filesystem.

Restic and Proxmox Backup Client for me.

Proxmox backup client goes to my local proxmox backup server, Restic goes to remote S3 storage on Backblaze.

I only have the OS on the sd card and I pop that out and dd a copy to my backup drive every 6 months or so. For that reason I like to use small sd cards like 8gb size. All other drives on the machine are external or network drives and those have their own backup routine with rsync.

Do you use only the sd card or what kind of storage system do you have on your sbc?