1. A method, in a set of distributed nodes, for bandwidth-efficient virtual machine image delivery, the method comprising: responsive to a request to generate a virtual machine (VM) in a node using an existing virtual machine image (VMI) file, identifying a set of file chunks that constitute the VMI file; retrieving the set of file chunks from within the set of distributed nodes, wherein retrieving the set of file chunks from within the set of distributed nodes comprises establishing an optimized plan for retrieving the set of file chunks in a bandwidth-efficient manner, wherein the optimized plan is established by the method comprising: for each file chunk in the set of file chunks, determining whether the file chunk exists in a local storage device; responsive to the file chunk existing in the local storage device, retrieving the file chunk from the local storage device; and responsive to the file chunk failing to exist in the local storage device; identifying one or more locations of the file chunk in one or more other nodes within the set of distributed nodes; responsive to the file chunk existing in more than one node of the one or more other nodes, identifying an optimal node to retrieve the file chunk based on a set of criteria associated with each of the more than one other node, wherein the set of criteria comprises historical data associated with accessing the node, priority of accessing the node, grouping of the file chunk with other file chunks to be retrieved from the node, and access-control policies associated with accessing file chunks in the one or more other nodes; and responsive to identifying an optimal node, retrieving the file chunk from a storage device associated with the optimal node; and responsive to retrieving the set of file chunks from within the set of distributed nodes, reassembling the set of file chunks into the VMI file for generation of the VM.