To avoid rsync to starve the system and network we use ionice when starting rsync and set the --bwlimit parameter. For example:
ionice -c2 -n7 rsync -aH --bwlimit=30000 /foo [email protected]:/
This does indeed help to ensure the source server remains responsive. However, the destination server become very slow due to disk io at 100% (as seen by the atop utility).
Is it possible to somehow use ionice at the destination server too? Perhaps via the rsync -e option? I'd prefer not to run the rsync daemon if possible.