Benefits of Using a Local Patch Server

Using a local patch server addresses security concerns as well as system analysis and patch download performance issues.

For instance, instead of patches and metadata being downloaded from the Sun patch server to each of your systems, the patch is downloaded only once to your local patch server. After the patch data is stored on this server, patch data is transferred to your system for analysis over your intranet instead of over the Internet.

You can configure a chain of patch servers on your intranet. The last link in the chain of local servers can point to the Sun patch server or to a local collection of patches. By using this chain of servers, a patch download request from your system to its primary patch server can be forwarded to other servers in the chain in an attempt to fulfill the request. If your system's primary server cannot locate a patch, the server makes the same request of the next server in the chain to see if the patch is stored there. If the patch is found, it is downloaded to the system. If the patch is not found, the request continues along the chain until the patch is found or the last server in the chain is reached.

For example, your company has a patch server that obtains patches directly from the Sun patch server. Each office in your company has its own patch server that obtains patches from the company patch server.

Each local patch server in the chain stores the patches found on another server in the chain based on the download request. So, a patch that is not initially found on your local server will be downloaded to your local server and stored before being downloaded to the client system. Each system in a chain of local patch servers might increase the amount of time it takes to download patches to your client system.