Persistent Volumes and PersistentVolumeClaims

PV and PVC in Plain English

A PersistentVolume (PV) is storage available to the cluster. A PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) is a request for some of that storage from within a namespace.

Scope Difference

Binding Lifecycle

Access Modes

Reclaim Policies

Full YAML Example

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolume
metadata:
  name: demo-pv
spec:
  capacity:
    storage: 1Gi
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy: Retain
  hostPath:
    path: /data/demo-pv
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: demo-pvc
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 1Gi
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: pvc-demo
spec:
  containers:
    - name: app
      image: busybox:1.36
      command: ['sh', '-c', 'echo hello > /data/hello.txt && sleep 3600']
      volumeMounts:
        - name: data
          mountPath: /data
  volumes:
    - name: data
      persistentVolumeClaim:
        claimName: demo-pvc

Binding Diagram

Why PVCs Are Better for App Teams

Developers usually should not hardcode infrastructure details. A PVC lets them ask for storage by size and capabilities, while platform teams manage the backing implementation.