yeah this is the way. as part of my borgmatic script I bring down all the stacks that have databases, let the backup run, then bring those stacks back up. as long as the containers aren’t running (and as long as the container properly closes itself down, not really something to be worried about though), any method of data back up should be fine.

I do this with quadlets and systemd targets now but before I was doing it with a bunch of docker compose down commands.

It is quite convenient for restoration, as you say