rsync using huge traffic

[Paul Slootman]

On Mon 03 Dec 2012, Ben Oswald wrote:
> 
> I've tested your advise for a few days now but is seems like the
> problem isn't solved. The traffice is now lower, about 15GB per backup,
> but still 4 times bigger than the whole data on the server. Is there an
> other option of rsync I can give a try.

I've never seen rsync transfer significantly more data over the wire
than the size of the data to transfer, so I can't help but think that
rsync is not at fault.

> > > The server I backup has 4GB of data and I use the following command
> > > to backup this data.  /usr/bin/rsync -aze 'ssh
> > > -i /root/.ssh/backup.key -l backupuser' --rsync-path='sudo rsync'
> > > --delete --exclude-from=ex.list $SRC $TRG

Check how many (large) files are hard-linked on the source.
If you have one 2GB file that has 7 hardlinks, then you will be
transferring that file 7 times as you don't use the -H option.

Secondly, you might try without the -z option.

Try it again with --stats to see what rsync's idea is of the amount of
data transferred etc.


Paul