This document describes the current state of PersistentVolumes
in Kubernetes. Familiarity with volumes is suggested.
Managing storage is a distinct problem from managing compute. The PersistentVolume
subsystem provides an API for users and administrators that abstracts details of how storage is provided from how it is consumed. To do this we introduce two new API resources: PersistentVolume
and PersistentVolumeClaim
.
A PersistentVolume
(PV) is a piece of storage in the cluster that has been provisioned by an administrator or dynamically provisioned using Storage Classes. It is a resource in the cluster just like a node is a cluster resource. PVs are volume plugins like Volumes, but have a lifecycle independent of any individual pod that uses the PV. This API object captures the details of the implementation of the storage, be that NFS, iSCSI, or a cloud-provider-specific storage system.
A PersistentVolumeClaim
(PVC) is a request for storage by a user. It is similar to a pod. Pods consume node resources and PVCs consume PV resources. Pods can request specific levels of resources (CPU and Memory). Claims can request specific size and access modes (e.g., can be mounted once read/write or many times read-only).
While PersistentVolumeClaims
allow a user to consume abstract storage
resources, it is common that users need PersistentVolumes
with varying
properties, such as performance, for different problems. Cluster administrators
need to be able to offer a variety of PersistentVolumes
that differ in more
ways than just size and access modes, without exposing users to the details of
how those volumes are implemented. For these needs there is the StorageClass
resource.
Please see the detailed walkthrough with working examples.
PVs are resources in the cluster. PVCs are requests for those resources and also act as claim checks to the resource. The interaction between PVs and PVCs follows this lifecycle:
There are two ways PVs may be provisioned: statically or dynamically.
A cluster administrator creates a number of PVs. They carry the details of the real storage which is available for use by cluster users. They exist in the Kubernetes API and are available for consumption.
When none of the static PVs the administrator created matches a user’s PersistentVolumeClaim
,
the cluster may try to dynamically provision a volume specially for the PVC.
This provisioning is based on StorageClasses
: the PVC must request a
storage class and
the administrator must have created and configured that class in order for dynamic
provisioning to occur. Claims that request the class ""
effectively disable
dynamic provisioning for themselves.
To enable dynamic storage provisioning based on storage class, the cluster administrator
needs to enable the DefaultStorageClass
admission controller
on the API server. This can be done, for example, by ensuring that DefaultStorageClass
is
among the comma-delimited, ordered list of values for the --enable-admission-plugins
flag of
the API server component. For more information on API server command line flags,
please check kube-apiserver documentation.
A user creates, or has already created in the case of dynamic provisioning, a PersistentVolumeClaim
with a specific amount of storage requested and with certain access modes. A control loop in the master watches for new PVCs, finds a matching PV (if possible), and binds them together. If a PV was dynamically provisioned for a new PVC, the loop will always bind that PV to the PVC. Otherwise, the user will always get at least what they asked for, but the volume may be in excess of what was requested. Once bound, PersistentVolumeClaim
binds are exclusive, regardless of how they were bound. A PVC to PV binding is a one-to-one mapping.
Claims will remain unbound indefinitely if a matching volume does not exist. Claims will be bound as matching volumes become available. For example, a cluster provisioned with many 50Gi PVs would not match a PVC requesting 100Gi. The PVC can be bound when a 100Gi PV is added to the cluster.
Pods use claims as volumes. The cluster inspects the claim to find the bound volume and mounts that volume for a pod. For volumes which support multiple access modes, the user specifies which mode is desired when using their claim as a volume in a pod.
Once a user has a claim and that claim is bound, the bound PV belongs to the user for as long as they need it. Users schedule Pods and access their claimed PVs by including a persistentVolumeClaim
in their Pod’s volumes block. See below for syntax details.
The purpose of the Storage Object in Use Protection feature is to ensure that Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs) in active use by a pod and Persistent Volume (PVs) that are bound to PVCs are not removed from the system as this may result in data loss.
Note: PVC is in active use by a pod when a pod object exists that is using the PVC.
If a user deletes a PVC in active use by a pod, the PVC is not removed immediately. PVC removal is postponed until the PVC is no longer actively used by any pods, and also if admin deletes a PV that is bound to a PVC, the PV is not removed immediately. PV removal is postponed until the PV is no longer bound to a PVC.
You can see that a PVC is protected when the PVC’s status is Terminating
and the Finalizers
list includes kubernetes.io/pvc-protection
:
kubectl describe pvc hostpath
Name: hostpath
Namespace: default
StorageClass: example-hostpath
Status: Terminating
Volume:
Labels: <none>
Annotations: volume.beta.kubernetes.io/storage-class=example-hostpath
volume.beta.kubernetes.io/storage-provisioner=example.com/hostpath
Finalizers: [kubernetes.io/pvc-protection]
...
You can see that a PV is protected when the PV’s status is Terminating
and the Finalizers
list includes kubernetes.io/pv-protection
too:
kubectl describe pv task-pv-volume
Name: task-pv-volume
Labels: type=local
Annotations: <none>
Finalizers: [kubernetes.io/pv-protection]
StorageClass: standard
Status: Available
Claim:
Reclaim Policy: Delete
Access Modes: RWO
Capacity: 1Gi
Message:
Source:
Type: HostPath (bare host directory volume)
Path: /tmp/data
HostPathType:
Events: <none>
When a user is done with their volume, they can delete the PVC objects from the API which allows reclamation of the resource. The reclaim policy for a PersistentVolume
tells the cluster what to do with the volume after it has been released of its claim. Currently, volumes can either be Retained, Recycled or Deleted.
The Retain
reclaim policy allows for manual reclamation of the resource. When the PersistentVolumeClaim
is deleted, the PersistentVolume
still exists and the volume is considered “released”. But it is not yet available for another claim because the previous claimant’s data remains on the volume. An administrator can manually reclaim the volume with the following steps.
PersistentVolume
. The associated storage asset in external infrastructure (such as an AWS EBS, GCE PD, Azure Disk, or Cinder volume) still exists after the PV is deleted.PersistentVolume
with the storage asset definition.For volume plugins that support the Delete
reclaim policy, deletion removes both the PersistentVolume
object from Kubernetes, as well as the associated storage asset in the external infrastructure, such as an AWS EBS, GCE PD, Azure Disk, or Cinder volume. Volumes that were dynamically provisioned inherit the reclaim policy of their StorageClass
, which defaults to Delete
. The administrator should configure the StorageClass
according to users’ expectations, otherwise the PV must be edited or patched after it is created. See Change the Reclaim Policy of a PersistentVolume.
Warning: TheRecycle
reclaim policy is deprecated. Instead, the recommended approach is to use dynamic provisioning.
If supported by the underlying volume plugin, the Recycle
reclaim policy performs a basic scrub (rm -rf /thevolume/*
) on the volume and makes it available again for a new claim.
However, an administrator can configure a custom recycler pod template using the Kubernetes controller manager command line arguments as described here. The custom recycler pod template must contain a volumes
specification, as shown in the example below:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: pv-recycler
namespace: default
spec:
restartPolicy: Never
volumes:
- name: vol
hostPath:
path: /any/path/it/will/be/replaced
containers:
- name: pv-recycler
image: "k8s.gcr.io/busybox"
command: ["/bin/sh", "-c", "test -e /scrub && rm -rf /scrub/..?* /scrub/.[!.]* /scrub/* && test -z \"$(ls -A /scrub)\" || exit 1"]
volumeMounts:
- name: vol
mountPath: /scrub
However, the particular path specified in the custom recycler pod template in the volumes
part is replaced with the particular path of the volume that is being recycled.
Kubernetes v1.11
beta
Support for expanding PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs) is now enabled by default. You can expand the following types of volumes:
You can only expand a PVC if its storage class’s allowVolumeExpansion
field is set to true.
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
kind: StorageClass
metadata:
name: gluster-vol-default
provisioner: kubernetes.io/glusterfs
parameters:
resturl: "http://192.168.10.100:8080"
restuser: ""
secretNamespace: ""
secretName: ""
allowVolumeExpansion: true
To request a larger volume for a PVC, edit the PVC object and specify a larger
size. This triggers expansion of the volume that backs the underlying PersistentVolume
. A
new PersistentVolume
is never created to satisfy the claim. Instead, an existing volume is resized.
Kubernetes v1.14
alpha
CSI volume expansion requires enabling ExpandCSIVolumes
feature gate and also requires specific CSI driver to support volume expansion. Please refer to documentation of specific CSI driver for more information.
You can only resize volumes containing a file system if the file system is XFS, Ext3, or Ext4.
When a volume contains a file system, the file system is only resized when a new Pod is using
the PersistentVolumeClaim
in ReadWrite mode. File system expansion is either done when Pod is starting up
or is done when Pod is running and underlying file system supports online expansion.
FlexVolumes allow resize if the driver is set with the RequiresFSResize
capability to true.
The FlexVolume can be resized on pod restart.
Kubernetes v1.15
beta
Note: Expanding in-use PVCs is available as beta since 1.15, and as alpha since Kubernetes 1.11. TheExpandInUsePersistentVolumes
feature must be enabled, which is the case automatically for many clusters for beta features. Please refer to the feature gate documentation for more information.
In this case, you don’t need to delete and recreate a Pod or deployment that is using an existing PVC. Any in-use PVC automatically becomes available to its Pod as soon as its file system has been expanded. This feature has no effect on PVCs that are not in use by a Pod or deployment. You must create a Pod which uses the PVC before the expansion can complete.
Similar to other volume types - FlexVolume volumes can also be expanded when in-use by a pod.
Note: FlexVolume resize is possible only when the underlying driver supports resize.
Note: Expanding EBS volumes is a time consuming operation. Also, there is a per-volume quota of one modification every 6 hours.
PersistentVolume
types are implemented as plugins. Kubernetes currently supports the following plugins:
Each PV contains a spec and status, which is the specification and status of the volume.
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolume
metadata:
name: pv0003
spec:
capacity:
storage: 5Gi
volumeMode: Filesystem
accessModes:
- ReadWriteOnce
persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy: Recycle
storageClassName: slow
mountOptions:
- hard
- nfsvers=4.1
nfs:
path: /tmp
server: 172.17.0.2
Generally, a PV will have a specific storage capacity. This is set using the PV’s capacity
attribute. See the Kubernetes Resource Model to understand the units expected by capacity
.
Currently, storage size is the only resource that can be set or requested. Future attributes may include IOPS, throughput, etc.
Kubernetes v1.13
beta
Prior to Kubernetes 1.9, all volume plugins created a filesystem on the persistent volume.
Now, you can set the value of volumeMode
to block
to use a raw block device, or filesystem
to use a filesystem. filesystem
is the default if the value is omitted. This is an optional API
parameter.
A PersistentVolume
can be mounted on a host in any way supported by the resource provider. As shown in the table below, providers will have different capabilities and each PV’s access modes are set to the specific modes supported by that particular volume. For example, NFS can support multiple read/write clients, but a specific NFS PV might be exported on the server as read-only. Each PV gets its own set of access modes describing that specific PV’s capabilities.
The access modes are:
In the CLI, the access modes are abbreviated to:
Important! A volume can only be mounted using one access mode at a time, even if it supports many. For example, a GCEPersistentDisk can be mounted as ReadWriteOnce by a single node or ReadOnlyMany by many nodes, but not at the same time.
Volume Plugin | ReadWriteOnce | ReadOnlyMany | ReadWriteMany |
---|---|---|---|
AWSElasticBlockStore | ✓ | - | - |
AzureFile | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
AzureDisk | ✓ | - | - |
CephFS | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Cinder | ✓ | - | - |
CSI | depends on the driver | depends on the driver | depends on the driver |
FC | ✓ | ✓ | - |
FlexVolume | ✓ | ✓ | depends on the driver |
Flocker | ✓ | - | - |
GCEPersistentDisk | ✓ | ✓ | - |
Glusterfs | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
HostPath | ✓ | - | - |
iSCSI | ✓ | ✓ | - |
Quobyte | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
NFS | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
RBD | ✓ | ✓ | - |
VsphereVolume | ✓ | - | - (works when pods are collocated) |
PortworxVolume | ✓ | - | ✓ |
ScaleIO | ✓ | ✓ | - |
StorageOS | ✓ | - | - |
A PV can have a class, which is specified by setting the
storageClassName
attribute to the name of a
StorageClass.
A PV of a particular class can only be bound to PVCs requesting
that class. A PV with no storageClassName
has no class and can only be bound
to PVCs that request no particular class.
In the past, the annotation volume.beta.kubernetes.io/storage-class
was used instead
of the storageClassName
attribute. This annotation is still working, however
it will become fully deprecated in a future Kubernetes release.
Current reclaim policies are:
rm -rf /thevolume/*
)Currently, only NFS and HostPath support recycling. AWS EBS, GCE PD, Azure Disk, and Cinder volumes support deletion.
A Kubernetes administrator can specify additional mount options for when a Persistent Volume is mounted on a node.
Note: Not all Persistent volume types support mount options.
The following volume types support mount options:
Mount options are not validated, so mount will simply fail if one is invalid.
In the past, the annotation volume.beta.kubernetes.io/mount-options
was used instead
of the mountOptions
attribute. This annotation is still working, however
it will become fully deprecated in a future Kubernetes release.
Note: For most volume types, you do not need to set this field. It is automatically populated for AWS EBS, GCE PD and Azure Disk volume block types. You need to explicitly set this for local volumes.
A PV can specify node affinity to define constraints that limit what nodes this volume can be accessed from. Pods that use a PV will only be scheduled to nodes that are selected by the node affinity.
A volume will be in one of the following phases:
The CLI will show the name of the PVC bound to the PV.
Each PVC contains a spec and status, which is the specification and status of the claim.
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
name: myclaim
spec:
accessModes:
- ReadWriteOnce
volumeMode: Filesystem
resources:
requests:
storage: 8Gi
storageClassName: slow
selector:
matchLabels:
release: "stable"
matchExpressions:
- {key: environment, operator: In, values: [dev]}
Claims use the same conventions as volumes when requesting storage with specific access modes.
Claims use the same convention as volumes to indicate the consumption of the volume as either a filesystem or block device.
Claims, like pods, can request specific quantities of a resource. In this case, the request is for storage. The same resource model applies to both volumes and claims.
Claims can specify a label selector to further filter the set of volumes. Only the volumes whose labels match the selector can be bound to the claim. The selector can consist of two fields:
matchLabels
- the volume must have a label with this valuematchExpressions
- a list of requirements made by specifying key, list of values, and operator that relates the key and values. Valid operators include In, NotIn, Exists, and DoesNotExist.All of the requirements, from both matchLabels
and matchExpressions
are ANDed together – they must all be satisfied in order to match.
A claim can request a particular class by specifying the name of a
StorageClass
using the attribute storageClassName
.
Only PVs of the requested class, ones with the same storageClassName
as the PVC, can
be bound to the PVC.
PVCs don’t necessarily have to request a class. A PVC with its storageClassName
set
equal to ""
is always interpreted to be requesting a PV with no class, so it
can only be bound to PVs with no class (no annotation or one set equal to
""
). A PVC with no storageClassName
is not quite the same and is treated differently
by the cluster depending on whether the
DefaultStorageClass
admission plugin
is turned on.
StorageClass
. All PVCs that have no storageClassName
can be bound only to
PVs of that default. Specifying a default StorageClass
is done by setting the
annotation storageclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class
equal to “true” in
a StorageClass
object. If the administrator does not specify a default, the
cluster responds to PVC creation as if the admission plugin were turned off. If
more than one default is specified, the admission plugin forbids the creation of
all PVCs.StorageClass
. All PVCs that have no storageClassName
can be bound only to PVs that
have no class. In this case, the PVCs that have no storageClassName
are treated the
same way as PVCs that have their storageClassName
set to ""
.Depending on installation method, a default StorageClass may be deployed to Kubernetes cluster by addon manager during installation.
When a PVC specifies a selector
in addition to requesting a StorageClass
,
the requirements are ANDed together: only a PV of the requested class and with
the requested labels may be bound to the PVC.
Note: Currently, a PVC with a non-emptyselector
can’t have a PV dynamically provisioned for it.
In the past, the annotation volume.beta.kubernetes.io/storage-class
was used instead
of storageClassName
attribute. This annotation is still working, however
it won’t be supported in a future Kubernetes release.
Pods access storage by using the claim as a volume. Claims must exist in the same namespace as the pod using the claim. The cluster finds the claim in the pod’s namespace and uses it to get the PersistentVolume
backing the claim. The volume is then mounted to the host and into the pod.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: mypod
spec:
containers:
- name: myfrontend
image: nginx
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: "/var/www/html"
name: mypd
volumes:
- name: mypd
persistentVolumeClaim:
claimName: myclaim
PersistentVolumes
binds are exclusive, and since PersistentVolumeClaims
are namespaced objects, mounting claims with “Many” modes (ROX
, RWX
) is only possible within one namespace.
Kubernetes v1.13
beta
The following volume plugins support raw block volumes, including dynamic provisioning where applicable.
Note: Only FC and iSCSI volumes supported raw block volumes in Kubernetes 1.9. Support for the additional plugins was added in 1.10.
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolume
metadata:
name: block-pv
spec:
capacity:
storage: 10Gi
accessModes:
- ReadWriteOnce
volumeMode: Block
persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy: Retain
fc:
targetWWNs: ["50060e801049cfd1"]
lun: 0
readOnly: false
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
name: block-pvc
spec:
accessModes:
- ReadWriteOnce
volumeMode: Block
resources:
requests:
storage: 10Gi
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: pod-with-block-volume
spec:
containers:
- name: fc-container
image: fedora:26
command: ["/bin/sh", "-c"]
args: [ "tail -f /dev/null" ]
volumeDevices:
- name: data
devicePath: /dev/xvda
volumes:
- name: data
persistentVolumeClaim:
claimName: block-pvc
Note: When adding a raw block device for a Pod, we specify the device path in the container instead of a mount path.
If a user requests a raw block volume by indicating this using the volumeMode
field in the PersistentVolumeClaim
spec, the binding rules differ slightly from previous releases that didn’t consider this mode as part of the spec.
Listed is a table of possible combinations the user and admin might specify for requesting a raw block device. The table indicates if the volume will be bound or not given the combinations:
Volume binding matrix for statically provisioned volumes:
PV volumeMode | PVC volumeMode | Result |
---|---|---|
unspecified | unspecified | BIND |
unspecified | Block | NO BIND |
unspecified | Filesystem | BIND |
Block | unspecified | NO BIND |
Block | Block | BIND |
Block | Filesystem | NO BIND |
Filesystem | Filesystem | BIND |
Filesystem | Block | NO BIND |
Filesystem | unspecified | BIND |
Note: Only statically provisioned volumes are supported for alpha release. Administrators should take care to consider these values when working with raw block devices.
Kubernetes v1.12
alpha
Volume snapshot feature was added to support CSI Volume Plugins only. For details, see volume snapshots.
To enable support for restoring a volume from a volume snapshot data source, enable the
VolumeSnapshotDataSource
feature gate on the apiserver and controller-manager.
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
name: restore-pvc
spec:
storageClassName: csi-hostpath-sc
dataSource:
name: new-snapshot-test
kind: VolumeSnapshot
apiGroup: snapshot.storage.k8s.io
accessModes:
- ReadWriteOnce
resources:
requests:
storage: 10Gi
Kubernetes v1.15
alpha
Volume clone feature was added to support CSI Volume Plugins only. For details, see volume cloning.
To enable support for cloning a volume from a pvc data source, enable the
VolumePVCDataSource
feature gate on the apiserver and controller-manager.
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
name: cloned-pvc
spec:
storageClassName: my-csi-plugin
dataSource:
name: existing-src-pvc-name
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
accessModes:
- ReadWriteOnce
resources:
requests:
storage: 10Gi
If you’re writing configuration templates or examples that run on a wide range of clusters and need persistent storage, we recommend that you use the following pattern:
persistentVolumeClaim.storageClassName
field.
This will cause the PVC to match the right storage
class if the cluster has StorageClasses enabled by the admin.persistentVolumeClaim.storageClassName
field as nil.Was this page helpful?
Thanks for the feedback. If you have a specific, answerable question about how to use Kubernetes, ask it on Stack Overflow. Open an issue in the GitHub repo if you want to report a problem or suggest an improvement.