With rsync, you can transfer files and directories over SSH from and to remote servers.

The general syntax for transferring files with rsync is as follows:

Local to Remote: rsync [OPTION]... -e ssh [SRC]... [USER@]HOST:DEST
Remote to Local: rsync [OPTION]... -e ssh [USER@]HOST:SRC... [DEST]

Where SRC is the source directory, DEST is the destination directory USER is the remote SSH username and HOST is the remote SSH host or IP Address.

The newer versions of rsync are configured to use SSH as default remote shell so you can omit the -e ssh option.