A reclaim policy determines what happens to a persistent volume after its persistent volume claim is released. Kubernetes supports Retain, Recycle, and Delete; Retain is the default shown for the example volume. section 7.1.4
Choose the policy according to the required data lifecycle:
- Retain preserves the volume and its data so another claim can use it. section 7.1.4
- Recycle scrubs the volume, equivalent to rm -f, but is deprecated; prefer Retain or Delete. section 7.1.4
- Delete removes both the persistent volume object and supported backing storage such as Amazon EBS, Azure Disk, GCE PD, OCI, or Cinder. section 7.1.4
Check a volume's reclaim policy
Run `kubectl describe pv vol02833` and inspect the `Reclaim Policy` field. The representative output shows `Retain` for a bound 100Mi HostPath volume at `/mnt/data`. section 7.1.4
root@kind-control-plane:/# kubectl describe pv vol02833
Name: vol02833
Labels: type=local
Annotations: pv.kubernetes.io/bound-by-controller: yes
Finalizers: [kubernetes.io/pv-protection]
StorageClass: manual
Status: Bound
Claim: default/claim-02833
Reclaim Policy: Retain
Access Modes: RWO
VolumeMode: FileSystem
Capacity: 100Mi
Node Affinity: <none>
Message:
Source:
Type: HostPath (bare host directory volume)
Path: /mnt/data
HostPathType:
Events: <none>
Use the command output to locate reclaim policy alongside claim, access modes, capacity, and storage source. section 7.1.4
