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Fleet-wide patching multiplies download volume by host count, so 840 MB of updates across 400 hosts is 336 GB pulled from the internet. A local mirror or caching proxy reduces upstream traffic to a single copy — a saving of over 99 percent — and removes the dependency on external availability during a security patch window.
Patch download volume
per host = packages x average size; total = per host x hosts; a local mirror reduces upstream traffic to one copy
A caching proxy such as apt-cacher-ng is simpler and only stores what is requested. A full mirror gives predictable content and works offline but consumes far more storage.
No. Stagger them so a bad package does not break the estate at once, and so the mirror and network are not saturated.