Another update from several months later: #kopia "just works" - it hasn't required any maintenance from me once I got it working on Windows and Linux boxes.
Regarding VSS: I found a different non-CLI hack that held me over until they released an official fix.
I'm not a huge fan of all these backup solutions running as userland system tray apps in Windows, versus OS service backends with user UI frontends, but I have to admit that it works fine on a single-user box.
Now that I have my container databases and configurations backed up, I feel much better.
@atrapavistas I'd go with #kopia .This includes encryption, so no need to have #veracrypt on the external disk additionally.
https://kopia.io/
Maybe not straight forward, but a great tool function wise.