This page shows how to change the reclaim policy of a Kubernetes PersistentVolume.
You need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using Minikube, or you can use one of these Kubernetes playgrounds:
To check the version, enter kubectl version
.
PersistentVolumes
can have various reclaim policies, including “Retain”,
“Recycle”, and “Delete”. For dynamically provisioned PersistentVolumes
,
the default reclaim policy is “Delete”. This means that a dynamically provisioned
volume is automatically deleted when a user deletes the corresponding
PersistentVolumeClaim
. This automatic behavior might be inappropriate if the volume
contains precious data. In that case, it is more appropriate to use the “Retain”
policy. With the “Retain” policy, if a user deletes a PersistentVolumeClaim
,
the corresponding PersistentVolume
is not be deleted. Instead, it is moved to the
Released
phase, where all of its data can be manually recovered.
List the PersistentVolumes in your cluster:
kubectl get pv
The output is similar to this:
NAME CAPACITY ACCESSMODES RECLAIMPOLICY STATUS CLAIM STORAGECLASS REASON AGE
pvc-b6efd8da-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Delete Bound default/claim1 manual 10s
pvc-b95650f8-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Delete Bound default/claim2 manual 6s
pvc-bb3ca71d-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Delete Bound default/claim3 manual 3s
This list also includes the name of the claims that are bound to each volume for easier identification of dynamically provisioned volumes.
Choose one of your PersistentVolumes and change its reclaim policy:
kubectl patch pv <your-pv-name> -p '{"spec":{"persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy":"Retain"}}'
where <your-pv-name>
is the name of your chosen PersistentVolume.
Verify that your chosen PersistentVolume has the right policy:
kubectl get pv
The output is similar to this:
NAME CAPACITY ACCESSMODES RECLAIMPOLICY STATUS CLAIM STORAGECLASS REASON AGE
pvc-b6efd8da-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Delete Bound default/claim1 manual 40s
pvc-b95650f8-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Delete Bound default/claim2 manual 36s
pvc-bb3ca71d-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Retain Bound default/claim3 manual 33s
In the preceding output, you can see that the volume bound to claim
default/claim3
has reclaim policy Retain
. It will not be automatically
deleted when a user deletes claim default/claim3
.
persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy
field of PersistentVolumeSpec.Was this page helpful?
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