If a PersistentVolume has a Reclaim Policy of Delete and its associated PVC is deleted, what happens to the underlying storage?

If a PersistentVolume has a Reclaim Policy of Delete and its associated PVC is deleted, what happens to the underlying storage?

• A. The underlying storage is preserved and can be reattached automatically
• B. The underlying storage is deleted along with the volume
• C. The data is moved to a backup volume automatically
• D. The PV is re-bound to a new PVC automatically

Answer: (B)

When a PV has a reclaim policy of Delete, deleting the PVC triggers cleanup of the backing storage. The external storage resource (like a cloud disk) is deleted by the storage provisioner, so the underlying storage is removed along with the volume. This is why the correct behavior is that the storage is deleted with the volume. If the policy were Retain, the data would stay and the PV would be released for potential reuse with manual intervention; Recycle is deprecated and not used in modern clusters. The reclaim policy does not automatically rebind the PV to a new PVC.

When a PV has a reclaim policy of Delete, deleting the PVC triggers cleanup of the backing storage. The external storage resource (like a cloud disk) is deleted by the storage provisioner, so the underlying storage is removed along with the volume. This is why the correct behavior is that the storage is deleted with the volume. If the policy were Retain, the data would stay and the PV would be released for potential reuse with manual intervention; Recycle is deprecated and not used in modern clusters. The reclaim policy does not automatically rebind the PV to a new PVC.