Server crashed using rsync

[Eugen Luca]

I'm trying to make a backup using this command 
 
    rsync -auvH /home/ /bak --delete --bwlimit=1000 --status
 
server load has been increased so much and the server crashed, as well
has gone out of memory 
My Server is a Dual Xeon 2.0 GHz with 2GB of Memory + 1GB Swap.
Could be that there are too many files, about 5.000.000, to be backed up
?
The way the files are structured make very difficult to create several
backup with less files.
Is there any one else facing issues like this ? Is there any workaround
on this ?
 
 
Thank you,
Eugen Luca