<p>k8s <a href="https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/containers/images/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">documentation</a> about <code>IfNotPresent</code> image pull policy states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the image is pulled only if it is not already present locally.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I'm not sure what &quot;locally&quot; actually means. Does it mean &quot;locally in a k8s cluster&quot; or &quot;locally on a node where pod is created&quot;? If I have 2 pods with same images but different image pull policies, does pulling the image for the 1st pod affects another pod?</p>

<p>it simply mean the : <strong>locally on worker nodes on which POD runs</strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I have 2 pods with same images but different image pull policies,
does pulling the image for the 1st pod affects another pod?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If it's the same image there won't be any issue in running either it gets pulled again or so, data will be the same each time.</p>
<p>However, the policy will work for each deployment separately so if it's <strong>always</strong>, it will <strong>pull</strong> images all time for that specific deployment.</p>
<p>If it's present in node <strong>locally</strong> with a similar <strong>TAG</strong> mentioned in YAML, policy set <strong>IfNotPresent</strong> local one will be used as <strong>TAG</strong> and URI matching and <strong>image</strong> is already available as it will use that.</p>
