[CentOS] Best practices for copying lots of files machine-to-machine

An entire filesystem (~180g) needs to be copied from one local linux 
machine to another.  Since both systems are on the same local subnet, 
there's no need for encryption.

I've done this sort of thing before a few times in the past in different 
ways, but wanted to get input from others on what's worked best for them.

One consideration is that the source filesystem contains quite a few 
hardlinks and symlinks and of course I want to preserve these, and 
preserve all timestamps and ownerships and permissions as well.   
Maintaining the integrity of this metadata and the integrity of the 
files themselves if of course the top priority.

Speed is also a consideration, but having done this before, I find it 
even more important to have a running progress report or log so I can 
see how the session is proceeding and approximately how much longer it 
will be until finished... and too to see if something's hung up.

One other consideration:  There isn't much disk space left on the source 
machine, so creating a tar file, even compressed, isn't an option.

What relevant methods have you been impressed by?