Considerations for choosing a Mirror or Proxy solution
The following table lists some benefits provided by these alternative deployment strategies:
Table 1.2. Comparison - HDP Deployment Strategies
| Advantages of repository mirroring (Options I, II, and III) |
Advantages of creating a proxy(Options IV) |
Minimizes network access (after the initial investment of copying the repository to local storage). The install process is therefore faster, reliable, and more cost effective (reduced WAN bandwidth minimizes the data center costs). Allows security-conscious data centers to qualify a fixed set of repository files. It also ensures that the remote server will not change these repository files. Large data centers may already have existing repository mirror servers for the purpose of OS upgrades and software maintenance. You can easily add the HDP Repositories to these existing servers.
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Avoids the need for long term management of the repository files (including periodic updates for upgrades, new versions, and bug fixes). Almost all data centers already have a setup of well-known proxies. In such cases, you can simply add the local proxy server to the existing proxies' configurations. This approach is easier compared to creating local mirror servers in data centers with no mirror server setup. The network access is same as that required when using a mirror repository, but the source repository handles file management.
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However, each of the above approaches are also known to have the following disadvantages:
Mirrors have to be managed for updates, upgrades, new versions, and bug fixes.
Proxy servers rely on the repository provider to not change the underlying files without notice.
Caching proxies are necessary, because non-caching proxies do not decrease WAN traffic and do not speed up the install process.
