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Storage

Pods are disposable, but data usually isn't. This section builds the storage mental model in layers: the ephemeral volumes attached directly to a pod spec, the PersistentVolume/PersistentVolumeClaim abstraction that survives a pod being rescheduled, the StorageClasses that provision that storage on demand, and the patterns StatefulSets use to give each replica its own durable disk.

Read in this order

  1. Volumes — ephemeral volume types (emptyDir, hostPath, configMap, secret, projected), and why none of them survive a pod being rescheduled to a different node
  2. PersistentVolumes and PersistentVolumeClaims — the PV/PVC lifecycle and binding, access modes, and reclaim policies
  3. StorageClasses and Dynamic Provisioning — CSI drivers, the dynamic provisioning flow end to end, and volume expansion
  4. StatefulSet Storage Patterns — volumeClaimTemplates, one PVC per replica, and what happens to that storage when pods and StatefulSets are deleted

If you only remember one thing

A Pod's volumes: block describes how storage is attached to that pod. It says nothing about where the bytes actually live or whether they outlive the pod — that's what PersistentVolumes, PersistentVolumeClaims, and StorageClasses are for.

Next

Once you can reason about how a pod gets durable storage, continue to Configuration and Packaging to see how the same workloads get their configuration and secrets injected.