You can optimize that further, by doing a two stage sync.
More exactly, like this:
rsync --recursive --times --links --hard-links \
--exclude "Packages*" --exclude "Sources*" \
--exclude "Release*" --exclude "ls-lR*" \
--verbose --stats \
$FROM $TO > $LOGFILE 2>&1
rsync --recursive --times --links --hard-links --max-delete=40000 \
--delete --delete-after \
--exclude "Archive-Update-in-Progress-${HOSTNAME}" \
--exclude "project/trace/${HOSTNAME}" \
--verbose --stats \
$FROM $TO > $LOGFILE.2nd 2>&1
cat $LOGFILE.2nd >> $LOGFILE
rm $LOGFILE.2nd