Speeding Up Rsync for Large File Sets

[Tim Gustafson]

We have a particular file system that we're trying to keep in sync
between two FreeBSD/ZFS servers using Rsync.

The file system has many millions of files, and about 4TB of data
total.  Rsync takes HOURS to run, even when there are no files to
transfer.  Just the comparison itself takes hours.

Is there any way to speed up the transfer?  The command line I'm using is:

/usr/local/bin/rsync --stats --rsh=/usr/bin/rsh --recursive --delete
--one-file-system --xattrs --links --hard-links --times --perms
--owner --group --exclude=.zfs /foo/bar root at remote:/foo/bar

Thanks!

-- 

Tim Gustafson
tjg at soe.ucsc.edu
831-459-5354
Baskin Engineering, Room 313A