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Change the Reclaim Policy of a PersistentVolume

This page shows how to change the reclaim policy of a Kubernetes PersistentVolume.

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

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

    Note:

    On Windows, you must double quote any JSONPath template that contains spaces (not single quote as shown above for bash). This in turn means that you must use a single quote or escaped double quote around any literals in the template. For example:

    kubectl patch pv <your-pv-name> -p "{\"spec\":{\"persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy\":\"Retain\"}}"

  3. 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.

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