Sharing NI Update Service between Virtual Machines

[EdDickens]

I'm currently using Virtual Machines having a separate VM for version of LabVIEW I need. 

The NI Update Service downloads can get fairly large (I see one of the download directories has about 15G right now). Many of the updates are needed on several of the VM's so I'm wondering if I point the download location to an external or Network drive, can the Update Service from all the VM's use the files that are downloaded from a different one or will it just download them again because that instance of the Update Service hasn't downloaded it yet?

Looking to save drive space on my SSD and download time.

Thanks

[tyk007]

I do something similar, although I download updates manually when I am made aware they exist and I think they are necessary and save them to a local repository (network drive shared wtihin my VMs). I then run them inside the VMs. The main reason for me to do it this way is that our company policy prohibits the VMs themselves from accessing the internet.

My understanding is that the downloads themselves are standalone installers so, at worst, you could just copy and run them in the needed VMs manually.