Creating Persistent Storage for Pods in Kubernetes

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Creating Persistent Storage for Pods in Kubernetes

Pods in Kubernetes are ephemeral, which makes the local container filesytem unusable, as you can never ensure the pod will remain. To decouple your storage from your pods, you will be creating a persistent volume to mount for use by your pods. You will be deploying a redis image. You will first create the persistent volume, then create the pod YAML for deploying the pod to mount the volume. You will then delete the pod and create a new pod, which will access that same volume.

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Lab Info

Level

Intermediate

Last updated

Sep 23, 2025

Duration

30m

Challenge

Create a PersistentVolume.

Use the following YAML spec for the PersistentVolume named redis-pv.yaml:

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolume
metadata:
  name: redis-pv
spec:
  storageClassName: ""
  capacity:
    storage: 1Gi
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  hostPath:
    path: "/mnt/data"

Then, create the PersistentVolume:
```
kubectl apply -f redis-pv.yaml
```

Challenge

Create a PersistentVolumeClaim.

Use the following YAML spec for the PersistentVolumeClaim named redis-pvc.yaml:

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: redisdb-pvc
spec:
  storageClassName: ""
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 1Gi

Then, create the PersistentVolumeClaim:
```
kubectl apply -f redis-pvc.yaml
```

Challenge

Create the redispod image, with a mounted volume to mount path `/data`

Use the following YAML spec for the pod named redispod.yaml:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: redispod
spec:
  containers:
  - image: redis
    name: redisdb
    volumeMounts:
    - name: redis-data
      mountPath: /data
    ports:
    - containerPort: 6379
      protocol: TCP
  volumes:
  - name: redis-data
    persistentVolumeClaim:
      claimName: redisdb-pvc

Then, create the pod:
```
kubectl apply -f redispod.yaml
```
Verify the pod was created:
```
kubectl get pods
```

Challenge

Connect to the container and write some data.
1. Connect to the container and run the redis-cli:
  
  kubectl exec -it redispod -- redis-cli
2. Set the key space server:name and value "redis server":
  
  SET server:name "redis server"
3. Run the GET command to verify the value was set:
  
  GET server:name
4. Exit the redis-cli:
  
  QUIT
Challenge

Delete `redispod` and create a new pod named `redispod2`.
1. Delete the existing redispod:
  
  kubectl delete pod redispod
2. Open the file redispod.yaml and change line 4 from name: redispod to:
  
  name: redispod2
3. Create a new pod named redispod2:
  
  kubectl apply -f redispod.yaml
Challenge

Verify the volume has persistent data.
1. Connect to the container and run redis-cli:
  
  kubectl exec -it redispod2 -- redis-cli
2. Run the GET command to retrieve the data written previously:
  
  GET server:name
3. Exit the redis-cli:
  
  QUIT

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