How to move directory from one server to other?

I have SSH access to the both servers, one of them is empty. How can I move site directory from old server to new server via SSH connection?

PS: On both servers is unix

Solution 1:

My favorite is rsync. It is smart enough to copy only what has to be copied (i.e. changed or new).

rsync -avz /source/path user@desthost:/destination/path/

Note the final / at the end to ask rsync to copy inside that path (not over it).
rsync takes care of managing the ssh connection for you. The avz (typical) options ask rsync to use the archive (tar) mode, in order to copy recursively, and keep as much as possible date and user values. The v option is verbose to show you what is currently happening. The z option will zip (compress) the transfer to hopefully save time and bandwidth.

rsync is very powerful and is used by most professionals, however you may want to test it first using non valuable data to ensure the path and options match the requirements.

If you need to use rsync via SSH on a non-standard port like 2222, you can use the following command (see this article):

rsync -avz -e 'ssh -p 2222' /source/path user@desthost:/destination/path/