Kubernetes Persistent Volumes
Kubernetes Persistent Volumes (PVs) are a storage abstraction in Kubernetes that provides a way to manage persistent storage independently of pods, decoupling storage lifecycle from pod lifecycle. They represent a piece of storage in the cluster that has been provisioned by an administrator or dynamically using StorageClasses, and can be claimed by pods through PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs). This enables stateful applications to retain data across pod restarts, rescheduling, or failures.
Developers should learn and use Kubernetes Persistent Volumes when deploying stateful applications like databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL), message queues, or any service requiring data persistence in a Kubernetes environment. They are essential for ensuring data durability and availability in cloud-native applications, as they allow storage to be dynamically allocated and managed without manual intervention, supporting features like scaling, backups, and high availability.