Stateless workloads are easy in Kubernetes. But when your application needs state; databases, logs, file storage the story changes. That’s where Persistent Volumes (PVs) come in.
Let’s break down the lifecycle, from Provisioner to Pod:
1️⃣ Persistent Volume Provisioner
This is the engine behind dynamic provisioning. Based on the StorageClass definition, the provisioner knows how to talk to your cloud provider (e.g., AWS EBS, GCP PD, Ceph, NFS) or on-prem driver to create storage. No manual PV creation needed.
2️⃣ StorageClass
Think of it as a blueprint for storage. It defines parameters like volumeType=gp2 or replication=3. When a PVC requests storage, the provisioner uses this class to carve out the right kind of volume.
3️⃣ Underlying Storage
This is the real disk or storage backend:
Cloud block storage (EBS, GCP PD, Azure Disk)
File systems (NFS, CephFS)
Distributed storage platforms (GlusterFS, Portworx, OpenEBS, Longhorn)
4️⃣ Persistent Volume (PV)
This is the real, allocated storage resource. Backed by physical storage, it’s now bound to the PVC. PVs have a lifecycle independent of Pods, they persist even if the Pod dies.
5️⃣ Persistent Volume Claim (PVC)
Here’s where developers interact. A Pod doesn’t ask for storage directly, it creates a claim: “I need 10Gi of fast-ssd storage.” Kubernetes matches this PVC to an available PV (or provisions one dynamically).
6️⃣ Container
Finally, the Pod’s manifest mounts the PVC. From inside the container, the application sees it as a filesystem path (/data, /var/lib/mysql, etc.). At this point, storage feels local, but behind the scenes, it’s provisioned, managed, and isolated by Kubernetes.
Note:
Misaligned StorageClass & PVC requests can cause unschedulable Pods.
Improper reclaim policies (Retain, Delete, Recycle) can leave orphaned volumes.
Multi-AZ and topology awareness ensure Pods don’t get scheduled away from their data.
Security matters: PVs should integrate with RBAC, quotas, and even encryption at rest.
Next time your Pod writes to disk, remember the journey: Provisioner → StorageClass → PVC → PV → Pod.
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