As we know, services running on this server gone quite popular. Besides BOINC, there are few other services that should remain online as much as possible.
For operating system we use Arch linux for ARM (alarm), which is a rolling release distro. It is quite stable, but I have been neglecting the mailing list and release notes before updating. Updates happen almost every day and pile up if not applied timely. The kernel is also custom-compiled for this board. Now I'd like to move away from rolling release and use something more solid, like Debian. Debian comes as the most obvious choice, but I am still looking for better ones.
For backups, we have solid backup plan, but not restore plan. If something goes wrong that requires restore from backup, it has to be manually unpacked and and the file system rebuilt.
Maybe I could use two equivalent boards, one to actually run the services, while installing and testing on the other one. I do have a second mini-pc: raspberry pi 1B. But this one is too different from the more powerful Allwinner R40 based board.
What I am going to do?
Nuke the current system and hope to re-install the critical services in a short enough time?
Move them to a laptop computer temporary and then move them back after reinstall? It's double the work.

The webserver will be moved to another computer. Also the database, but without the result and workunit data will be moved.
Seduler will be shut down.
Then I can reinstall properly the primary server.