Back up files to your own server over SSH with the Relayium CLI

Last updated: 2026-07-08

If you already have SSH access to a box — a VPS, a home server, a NAS, a workstation — you can back files up to it with the Relayium CLI without setting up a sync service or an account. The transfer runs over your existing SSH connection, so the bytes go straight to your server and never pass through Relayium.

This guide covers pushing and pulling directories, what resume and integrity checking give you, and how to run it on a schedule with cron.

Push a directory to your server

push takes one or more sources and an scp-style destination. Relayium connects over SSH using your usual keys and config, then streams the files to the destination directory:

# copy a local folder to the server
relayium push ./photos user@your-server:backups/

# choose an SSH key and a non-default port
relayium push -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 -p 2222 ./photos user@your-server:backups/

It reuses your ~/.ssh/config, so host aliases, keys and ports you already set up just work.
If relayium is installed on the server, it uses the native protocol: per-file resume and a SHA-256 check on every file.
If not, it falls back to piping a tar stream into the remote, so a bare server with no relayium still works.

Pull files back

Restoring is the same command in reverse: give a remote source and a local destination directory. This is how you recover a backup, or sync a server's output down to your laptop:

relayium pull user@your-server:backups/ ./restore

Resume and integrity come built in

Backups tend to be large and networks tend to drop. When relayium is on both ends, an interrupted transfer resumes from where it stopped on the next run instead of re-sending everything, and each file is verified end to end with a SHA-256 hash — what lands on the server is byte-for-byte what you sent.

If you ever want a clean, full re-send instead of resuming a partial file, pass --no-resume.

Resume needs relayium on the remote (the native protocol); the tar fallback always sends in full.
The SHA-256 check runs automatically; a mismatch is reported and that file is flagged as failed.

Run it on a schedule with cron

Because push is a single non-interactive command that uses your SSH keys, it drops straight into cron for a recurring backup. Point it at a key with no passphrase (or an agent), and log the output so you can see failures:

# back up every night at 2am — add to your crontab (crontab -e)
0 2 * * * relayium push -i ~/.ssh/backup_key ~/documents user@your-server:backups/ >> ~/relayium-backup.log 2>&1

Combined with resume, a nightly job that gets interrupted simply continues the next night.
The command exits non-zero if any file fails its integrity check, so cron's mail-on-failure catches problems.

Frequently asked questions

Do the files go through Relayium's servers?

No. push and pull run entirely over your own SSH connection. Relayium's servers are never involved and you need no account.

Does the server need relayium installed?

It's optional. With relayium on the remote you get the native protocol — resumable transfers and per-file SHA-256 checks. Without it, relayium falls back to a tar stream over SSH, which still works but always sends each file in full.

How does it choose which SSH key and port to use?

It reads your ~/.ssh/config like ssh does, so host aliases, keys and ports are picked up automatically. You can also override them per command with -i for the identity file and -p for the port.

Is this faster than rsync?

For pushing to your own server it's in the same ballpark as rsync over SSH; the point isn't to beat rsync but to give you one tool that also does cross-network and server-to-server transfers with the same resume and integrity guarantees.

Back up your next directory the direct way — over your own SSH, resumable, integrity-checked, and free.

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