You might want to maintain multiple copies of package repositories with the same content to meet the following goals:
Increase the availability of the repository by maintaining copies on different nodes.
Enhance the performance of repository accesses if you have many users or your users are spread across a great distance.
Use the How to Update a Local IPS Package Repository procedure to update one of your package repositories. Then use the How to Clone a Local IPS Package Repository procedure to update additional identical repositories from the repository you updated first. These two procedures are very similar, with an important difference in the way you use the pkgrecv command. The pkgrecv operation shown in the clone procedure copies the source repository files exactly, with the following effects:
Timestamps for the catalogs of cloned repositories are exactly the same as timestamps for the catalogs of the source repository. If your repositories are load balanced, the catalogs in all of the repositories should be exactly the same to avoid problems when the load balancer switches clients from one node to another. See Configuring Load Balancing for information about load balancing.
Packages that are in the destination repository but not in the source repository are removed from the destination repository. Do not use a sparse repository as the source for a clone operation unless your goal is to create an exact copy of only that sparse repository.