Volume Types, Access Modes, and Reclaim Policies

Kubernetes splits storage into two layers. Inline volumes are defined in the Pod spec and tied to the Pod's lifecycle. PersistentVolumes are cluster-scoped resources that exist independently of any Pod, backed by real storage infrastructure. This article focuses on the second layer: the PV-backed volume types that carry durable state in production.

Three questions define every durable storage decision: which volume type matches your infrastructure, which access mode controls who can write, and which reclaim policy determines what survives when a claim is deleted. Get all three right and storage is invisible. Get any one wrong and you're losing data or debugging a PVC stuck in Pending.