sudo apt-get install backup-manager

take advantage of LVM snapshots. Take snapshots before and after an upgrade. In case, if the system is in unrecoverable position, rollback to the last snapshot from a system rescue LiveCD. A useful program for this, as well as regular system backups is timeshift

the files are then transferred over the to git repository onto the cloud server.

File pick up begins with an analysis of the file structure and creation of a git repository within Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

Agreed, I use rdiff-backup because I found my rsync backups were getting cluttered with old files, and sometimes the lack of versioned backups was problematic. I'm a big fan of rdiff-backup. I don't think it actually leverages rsync, as such, but librsync. It's a great tool.

I think that rsync is great but tools like dar, attic, bup, rdiff-backup or obnam are better. I use obnam, as it does "snapshot backups" with deduplication.