A municipal SRE’s PV uses reclaimPolicy Retain after its PVC is deleted. What must happen before that volume can be safely reused?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Retain means “don’t throw the disk away”—someone has to save or clean the data, then deliberately put the PV back on the market.
Full Explanation
When a municipal SRE’s PV uses reclaimPolicy Retain after its PVC is deleted, an administrator must recover or scrub data as needed, then manually clear claim references and return the PV to Available before safe reuse. Retain means don’t throw the disk away—someone has to save or clean the data, then deliberately put the PV back on the market.
Retain does not immediately make the PV Available and wipe all data. Restarting kube-controller-manager does not convert Retain into Delete automatically. Creating a second PVC with the same name does not guarantee Retain auto-rebinding.
Exam caveat: Released phase with a stale claimRef is the usual post-Retain state. Editing claimRef incorrectly can orphan cloud disks or attach the wrong data to a new claim—be careful.
Operational check: delete the PVC, verify PV is Released with data intact, backup or wipe as required, clear claimRef per runbook, set Available, and bind a new PVC only after verification. Keep civic change tickets precise: record object names, namespaces, and before/after observations so the next on-call engineer can replay the fix without guesswork. Keep civic change tickets precise: record object names, namespaces, and before/after observations so the next on-call engineer can replay the fix without guesswork.