I work in a kinda similar environment even if bigger. To manage runtime dependencies we use cvmfs. A read only distributed filesystems, kinda like a very spec

I work in a kinda similar environment even if bigger. To manage runtime dependencies we use cvmfs. A read only distributed filesystems, kinda like a very specific NFS for software distribution. If that is never been a problem, cvmfs it is quite stable and very used in our field.