diff --git a/.dockerignore b/.dockerignore
index f4bdf33d7..30f93a461 100644
--- a/.dockerignore
+++ b/.dockerignore
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
 !/*.go
 !/go.*
 !/cmd/*
+!/docker/entrypoint.sh
 !/internal/*
 !/helpers/*
 !/VERSION
diff --git a/changelog/unreleased/pull-5448 b/changelog/unreleased/pull-5448
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..e0cafd43e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelog/unreleased/pull-5448
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+Enhancement: Allow nice and ionice configuration for restic containers
+
+The official restic docker now supports the following environment variables:
+
+`NICE`: set the desired nice scheduling.  See `man nice`.
+`IONICE_CLASS`: set the desired I/O scheduling class.  See `man ionice`.  Note that real time support requires the invoker to manually add the `SYS_NICE` capability.
+`IONICE_PRIORITY`: set the prioritization for ionice in the given `IONICE_CLASS`.  This does nothing without `IONICE_CLASS`, but defaults to `4` (no priority, no penalties).
+
+See https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/stable/020_installation.html#docker-container for further details.
+
+https://github.com/restic/restic/pull/5448
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/doc/020_installation.rst b/doc/020_installation.rst
index 60908116a..34cf62f81 100644
--- a/doc/020_installation.rst
+++ b/doc/020_installation.rst
@@ -289,6 +289,23 @@ Restic relies on the hostname for various operations. Make sure to set a static
 hostname using `--hostname` when creating a Docker container, otherwise Docker
 will assign a random hostname each time.
 
+The container additionally honors traditional ``nice`` `(man page) <https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/nice.1.html>`__ and ``ionice`` `(man page) <https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/ionice.1.html#OPTIONS>`__ directives via the following environment variables.
+This allows restic to be scheduled as a background process to reduce latency for the system while running.
+
+* ``NICE``: If set, this adjusts the CPU prioritization via ``nice -n``. This defaults to no adjustment - standard CPU priority.
+* ``IONICE_CLASS``: If set, this adjusts the IO prioritization of the restic process via ``ionice -c`` for the available classes.
+  Note: if you attempt to set `real-time`, you *will* have to add the ``SYS_NICE`` capability (`see capabilities manpage <https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/capabilities.7.html#DESCRIPTION>`__) to allow using this IO class.
+* ``IONICE_PRIORITY``: This defaults to 4 (no prioritization or penalties); this is the prioritization within the given ``IONICE_CLASS``.
+
+The following example runs restic such that other CPU and IO requests have higher priority. This effectively perturbs the system as minimally as possible while ``restic`` runs.
+
+.. code-block:: console
+
+    # docker run -e NICE=20 -e IONICE_CLASS=2 -e IONICE_PRIORITY=7 ghcr.io/restic/restic
+
+*Remember* that this invocation is explicitly telling your CPU and IO scheduler to deprioritize restic.  This typically will result in a longer runtime.  For a system with heavy load, this can be drastically longer.
+
+
 From Source
 ***********
 
diff --git a/docker/Dockerfile b/docker/Dockerfile
index 4c031ebac..921bd8414 100644
--- a/docker/Dockerfile
+++ b/docker/Dockerfile
@@ -8,11 +8,17 @@ RUN go mod download
 
 COPY . .
 RUN go run build.go
-
 FROM alpine:latest AS restic
-
 RUN apk add --no-cache ca-certificates fuse openssh-client tzdata jq
 
 COPY --from=builder /go/src/github.com/restic/restic/restic /usr/bin
+COPY ./docker/entrypoint.sh /entrypoint.sh
 
-ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/bin/restic"]
+# IO class default is "none"- 0, however busybox reject ionice `-c0 -n<something>`
+# since priority has no meaning for no scheduler.
+# Thus the entrypoint script below is necessary
+ENV IONICE_CLASS=
+ENV IONICE_PRIORITY=4
+ENV NICE=0
+
+ENTRYPOINT ["/entrypoint.sh"]
diff --git a/docker/Dockerfile.release b/docker/Dockerfile.release
index 615f4aec8..5f40236c7 100644
--- a/docker/Dockerfile.release
+++ b/docker/Dockerfile.release
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 # the official binaries are cross-built from Linux running on an AMD64 host
 # other architectures also seem to generate identical binaries but stay on the safe side
-FROM --platform=linux/amd64 restic/builder:latest as helper
+FROM --platform=linux/amd64 restic/builder:latest AS helper
 
 ARG TARGETOS
 ARG TARGETARCH
@@ -19,6 +19,14 @@ LABEL org.opencontainers.image.documentation="https://restic.readthedocs.io"
 LABEL org.opencontainers.image.source="https://github.com/restic/restic"
 
 COPY --from=helper /output/restic /usr/bin
+COPY ./docker/entrypoint.sh /entrypoint.sh
 RUN apk add --no-cache ca-certificates fuse openssh-client tzdata jq
 
-ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/bin/restic"]
+# IO class default is "none"- 0, however busybox rejects ionice `-c0 -n<something>`
+# since priority has no meaning for no scheduler.
+# Thus the entrypoint script below is necessary.
+ENV IONICE_CLASS=
+ENV IONICE_PRIORITY=4
+ENV NICE=0
+
+ENTRYPOINT ["/entrypoint.sh"]
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/docker/build.sh b/docker/build.sh
index bd4477951..f4a8fad55 100755
--- a/docker/build.sh
+++ b/docker/build.sh
@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
 #!/bin/sh
+root="$(readlink -f "$0")"
+root="$(dirname "$(dirname "${root}")")"
 
 set -e
 
@@ -8,6 +10,6 @@ echo "Build docker image restic/restic:latest"
 docker build \
   --rm \
   --pull \
-  --file docker/Dockerfile \
+  --file "${root}"/docker/Dockerfile \
   --tag restic/restic:latest \
-  .
+  "${root}" "$@"
diff --git a/docker/entrypoint.sh b/docker/entrypoint.sh
new file mode 100755
index 000000000..8d8b4f3a6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docker/entrypoint.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+#!/bin/sh -e
+
+# This must be tested against busybox sh, since there are quirks in its
+# implementation of tooling.  Busybox rejects `ionice -c0 -n<something>` for example.
+set -- /usr/bin/restic "$@"
+if [ -n "${IONICE_CLASS}" ]; then
+	set -- ionice -c "${IONICE_CLASS}" -n "${IONICE_PRIORITY:-4}" "$@"
+fi
+
+exec nice -n "${NICE:-0}"  "$@"