Change the Reclaim Policy of a PersistentVolume
This page shows how to change the reclaim policy of a Kubernetes PersistentVolume.
- Before you begin
- Why change reclaim policy of a PersistentVolume
- Changing the reclaim policy of a PersistentVolume
- What’s next
Before you begin
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.
Why change reclaim policy of a PersistentVolume
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.
Changing the reclaim policy of a PersistentVolume
-
List the PersistentVolumes in your cluster:
kubectl get pvThe output is similar to this:
NAME CAPACITY ACCESSMODES RECLAIMPOLICY STATUS CLAIM REASON AGE pvc-b6efd8da-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Delete Bound default/claim1 10s pvc-b95650f8-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Delete Bound default/claim2 6s pvc-bb3ca71d-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Delete Bound default/claim3 3sThis 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 pvThe output is similar to this:
NAME CAPACITY ACCESSMODES RECLAIMPOLICY STATUS CLAIM REASON AGE pvc-b6efd8da-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Delete Bound default/claim1 40s pvc-b95650f8-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Delete Bound default/claim2 36s pvc-bb3ca71d-b7b5-11e6-9d58-0ed433a7dd94 4Gi RWO Retain Bound default/claim3 33sIn the preceding output, you can see that the volume bound to claim
default/claim3has reclaim policyRetain. It will not be automatically deleted when a user deletes claimdefault/claim3.
What’s next
- Learn more about PersistentVolumes.
- Learn more about PersistentVolumeClaims.
Reference
- PersistentVolume
- PersistentVolumeClaim
- See the
persistentVolumeReclaimPolicyfield of PersistentVolumeSpec.