Which is better for website backup – rsync or git push

I run 2 LAMP web servers at different providers for disaster recovery purposes – a high powered live server, and a low powered backup server.

Currently I rsync all the data from the live server to the backup server once every 4 hours.

This works ok, but does spike system load whilst rsync figures out which files have changed.

Since all the websites also live in git repositories, I'm wondering whether a git push would be a better backup technique.

I'd have to include the live uploads folder in the git repo; and then the backup process would be:

live$ git add .
live$ git commit -a -m "{data-time} snapshot"
live$ git push backup live_branch

and then have a post commit hook on the backup server to checkout on every push.

Each website ranges in size from 50M to 2GB. I'd end up with about 50 separate git repos.

Is this a "better" solution than rsync?

• Is git better at calculating which files have changed?
• Is git push more efficient that rsync
• What have I forgotten?

Thanks!

—- Data from some comparison tests ——

1) 52MB folder then adding a new 500k folder (mainly text files)

rsync

sent 1.47K bytes  received 285.91K bytes  
total size is 44.03M  speedup is 153.22

real    0m0.718s    user    0m0.044s    sys     0m0.084s

git

Counting objects: 38, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (37/37), done.
Writing objects: 100% (37/37), 118.47 KiB, done.
Total 37 (delta 3), reused 0 (delta 0)

real    0m0.074s     user   0m0.029s    sys     0m0.045s

2) 1.4G folder then adding a new 18M folder (mainly images)

rsync

sent 3.65K bytes  received 18.90M bytes
total size is 1.42G  speedup is 75.17

real    0m5.311s    user    0m0.784s    sys     0m0.328s

git

Counting objects: 108, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (106/106), done.
Writing objects: 100% (107/107), 17.34 MiB | 5.21 MiB/s, done.
Total 107 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)

real    0m15.334s    user   0m5.202s    sys     0m1.040s

3) 52M folder then adding a new 18M folder (mainly images)

rsync

sent 2.46K bytes  received 18.27M bytes  4.06M bytes/sec
total size is 62.38M  speedup is 3.41

real    0m4.124s    user    0m0.640s    sys     0m0.188s

git

Counting objects: 108, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (106/106), done.
Writing objects: 100% (107/107), 17.34 MiB | 5.43 MiB/s, done.
Total 107 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)

real    0m6.990s    user    0m4.868s    sys     0m0.573s

4) 1.4G folder then adding a new 500k folder (mainly text)

rsync

sent 2.66K bytes  received 916.04K bytes  612.47K bytes/sec
total size is 1.42G  speedup is 1547.14

real    0m1.191s    user    0m0.180s    sys     0m0.268s

git

Counting objects: 49, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (48/48), done.
Writing objects: 100% (48/48), 177.90 KiB, done.
Total 48 (delta 3), reused 0 (delta 0)

real    0m1.776s    user    0m0.390s    sys     0m0.497s

5) 1.4G folder – no change

rsync

sent 1.72K bytes  received 716.44K bytes  287.26K bytes/sec
total size is 1.42G  speedup is 1979.18

real    0m1.092s    user    0m0.168s    sys     0m0.272s

git

nothing to commit (working directory clean)

real    0m0.636s    user    0m0.268s    sys     0m0.348s

5) 52M folder – no change

rsync

sent 528 bytes  received 88.40K bytes  59.29K bytes/sec
total size is 62.38M  speedup is 701.41

real    0m0.779s    user    0m0.044s    sys     0m0.144s

git

nothing to commit (working directory clean)

real    0m0.156s    user    0m0.057s    sys     0m0.097s