A while ago I wrote a CLI tool that does exactly that: https://github.com/ema/nubo

The tool also exposes its functionalities as a python library, so it might be useful for those who want to manage their VMs through a panel indicator.

You might want to give a try to apt-cacher-ng.

apt-get install apt-cacher-ng

I use this - and it's great with my slow internet connection. It's totally transparent, and I only notice it if my vm running it is down.

And despite the name, newer versions work with yum too (although I found I had to disable the fastest mirror yum plugin to get reliable caching).

Is it problematic to install SystemTap on Ubuntu? On Debian systems it's straightforward.

apt-get install systemtap linux-image-amd64-dbg

It's not too much harder, but requires a non-default respository, so mildly harder. Quasi-official instructions here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Systemtap

The difference is that, as of the past few releases, Ubuntu doesn't ship a -dbg kernel package in the main repository like Debian does. Instead they've come up with a new system to ship 'debug symbol' variants of all packages, with a -dbgsym suffix. But they ship them in a separate repository that isn't enabled by default, I guess to avoid confusing end-users (ddebs.ubuntu.com). So you need to configure that repository, install its key, then pull linux-image-$(uname -r)-dbgsym. I guess you might also want to pull the debug-symbol versions of the main libraries as well.