Took me a little while to figure this out, but it’s a pretty standard implementation of the rsync command — you use the “-e” command and then specify an entire ssh command to use, like below:
function amazonrsync {
rsync -rave “ssh -i ~/.ssh/AWS_key.pem” $1 $2
}
That’s an entire shell function, by the way, that makes the whole thing easier to use. Feel free to put it in your shell alias file.
Source: Rsync to AWS EC2 Using .PEM key – AnthonyChambers.co.uk Blog