Reattach a Dynamically Provisioned PV to a PVC

Question

I deployed a PVC, which dynamically created a PV. After that I deleted the PVC and now my PV looks like below:

PS Kubernetes> kubectl get pv
NAME                                       CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   RECLAIM POLICY   STATUS     CLAIM            STORAGECLASS   REASON   AGE
pvc-1b59942c-eb26-4603-b78e-7054d9418da6   2G         RWX            Retain           Released   default/db-pvc   hostpath                26h

When I recreate my PVC, that creates a new PV. Is there a way to reattach the existing PV to my PVC ? Is there a way to do it automatically ?

I tried to attach the PV with my PVC using "volumeName" option, but it did not work.

NAME      STATUS    VOLUME                                    CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
db-pvc    Pending   pvc-1b59942c-eb26-4603-b78e-7054d9418da6   0                         hostpath       77s

you may run `k get pv -o jsonpath="{.spec.claimRef}"` to get some more helpful info. `persistentvolumeclaims` is a namespaced resource.so ensure its all the same. — P...., Jul 12 '21 at 19:42

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 12 '21 at 23:28

When a PVC is deleted, the PV stays in the "Released" state with the claimRef uid of the deleted PVC.

To reuse a PV, you need to delete the claimRef to make it go to the "Available" state

You may either edit the PV and manually delete the claimRef section, or run the patch command as under:

kubectl patch pv pvc-1b59942c-eb26-4603-b78e-7054d9418da6 --type json -p '[{"op": "remove", "path": "/spec/claimRef"}]'

Subsequently, you recreate the PVC.

Thanks Rakesh. Is there a way to do it automatically ? – Sujeet Padhi Jul 13 '21 at 03:45 — Sujeet Padhi, Jul 13 '21 at 03:45

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 12 '21 at 19:28

If you are on GKE and your PV is running

You can create the PVC using

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: pvc-1b59942c-eb26-4603-b78e-7054d9418da6
spec:
  storageClassName: default
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 2G

Reattach a Dynamically Provisioned PV to a PVC

2 Answers2