You might want to maintain multiple copies of package repositories with the same content to achieve 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.
Configure load balancing, as described in Configuring Load Balancing.
Make sure that the repository that will be the source for the clone repositories is current. If necessary, use the How to Update a Local IPS Package Repository procedure to update the source repository. Then use one of the following clone procedures:
How to Clone a Local IPS Package Repository – Create clones of the source repository
How to Update a Cloned Local IPS Package Repository – Update existing clone repositories
The clone procedures are very similar to the How to Explicitly Copy a Repository From the Internet and How to Update a Local IPS Package Repository procedures. The pkgrecv operation shown in both of the clone procedures copies the source repository files exactly (--clone), 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 must 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.
The repository copy operation is significantly faster than the default repository copy operation.