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Raspberry Pi k3s fleet — backup and restore sequence

Parent runbook: How to provision k3s, Longhorn, and Rancher on a Raspberry Pi fleet. DR package hub: Backup and disaster recovery package — smart farm stack. DR decision rules: Disaster recovery decision rules — farm edge stack. Platform layer: Kubernetes platform backup / DR — Pi, k3s, Longhorn. Granularity compare: Backup strategy comparison — farmOS, homelab, PostgreSQL, containers.

Three tracks (understand all; implement per phase)

Track Protects P0 P1 Later
A. Application logical dumps Coherent DB exports (e.g. pg_dump) Optional Mandatory for farm records Mandatory
B. Longhorn volume / system backup PVC block data + Longhorn metadata Optional Recommended Mandatory with tested restore
C. etcd / k3s state Control plane Rarely needed if cluster is throwaway Document method Mandatory with HA story

Rule (from the platform page): track B without track A can still lose application consistency if the database was not quiesced or logically exported.

Mandatory — P1 operator sequence (outline)

  1. Choose a backup destination reachable from the cluster (S3-compatible API, NFS on a NAS, restic to external disk, etc.).
  2. Implement track A for each stateful application (cron + restic --stdin-from-command pattern per the comparison page).
  3. Configure Longhorn backup targets and policies per Longhorn docs (see vault captures in source notes) after base volumes work.
  4. Document restore order in a tabletop exercise before you need it: PVC restore, namespace recreate, DB import order.
  5. Record etcd / k3s snapshot approach matching your install mode (single server vs HA) using k3s datastore documentation.

Optional (HA / scale)

  • Off-site replication of restic repos or versioned object storage.
  • Longhorn system backup bundle for storage-layer DR (not a full cluster clone by itself).

Restore drill flow (reference)

mermaid flowchart TD L[Detect loss] --> T{Which track failed?} T -->|App| A[Restore DB from dump] T -->|PVC| B[Longhorn restore per docs] T -->|Cluster| C[etcd / k3s recovery] A --> V[Validate app] B --> V C --> V

Pi / off-grid notes