In today’s world, data is one of the most valuable assets. It’s essential to keep data safe and secure and have backups available in case of any data loss. Rsync is a powerful tool that can help achieve these goals by synchronizing server files. In this blog post, we’ll explore using rsync to transfer files between servers.
Transferring files with Rsync
Rsync is a command-line tool that can transfer files between servers. It uses a delta transfer algorithm to only transfer the changes made to a file, which makes it efficient for transferring large files or directories. To transfer files with rsync, we need to specify the source and destination servers along with the path of the files that need to be transferred.
For example, let’s say we want to transfer a file called example.txt from /home/user directory on server A to /home/user directory on server B. We can use the following command to transfer the file:
rsync -avz /home/user/example.txt user@serverB:/home/user/In this command, the -a option stands for archive mode, and the -v option stands for verbose mode, and the -z option stands for compressing data during transfer. The username and server address are specified before the colon, and the destination directory is specified after the colon.
Related: How to use dry run with rsync?
Syncing Directories with Rsync
Rsync can also be used to sync directories between servers. In this case, we need to specify the source, destination directories, and server addresses. Rsync will compare the files in both directories and only transfer the files that have been changed or added.
For example, let’s say we want to sync the /home/user directory on server A with the /home/user directory on server B. We can use the following command to sync the directories:
rsync -avz user@serverA:/home/user/ user@serverB:/home/user/In this command, we’re using the same options as before, but this time we’re specifying the source and destination directories for syncing.
Conclusion
Rsync is a powerful tool that can help to transfer files and sync directories between servers efficiently. It’s easy to use and provides many options to customize the transfer process. Using rsync, we can ensure that our data is safe and secure, and we have backups available in case of any data loss. We hope this blog post has given you a good understanding of using rsync to transfer files between servers.