This CKA practice question tests your understanding of storage. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A DevOps team needs to deploy a stateful application that requires persistent storage with ReadWriteMany access mode across multiple pods running on different nodes. Which Kubernetes resource should they use to provision the storage?
A hostPath volume
Why wrong: hostPath is node-specific and doesn't support multi-node access.
A PersistentVolume with access mode ReadWriteOnce
Why wrong: ReadWriteOnce limits access to a single node.
A PersistentVolume with access mode ReadWriteMany
ReadWriteMany allows multiple pods across nodes to read and write.
An emptyDir volume
Why wrong: emptyDir is ephemeral and cannot be shared across nodes.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
A PersistentVolume with access mode ReadWriteMany
ReadWriteMany (RWX) is the only access mode that allows multiple pods across different nodes to simultaneously read and write to the same persistent storage volume. A PersistentVolume with access mode ReadWriteMany meets the requirement for a stateful application needing concurrent access from pods running on different nodes, typically backed by network filesystems like NFS, GlusterFS, or CephFS.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
A hostPath volume
Why it's wrong here
hostPath is node-specific and doesn't support multi-node access.
A PersistentVolume with access mode ReadWriteOnce
Why it's wrong here
ReadWriteOnce limits access to a single node.
A PersistentVolume with access mode ReadWriteMany
Why this is correct
ReadWriteMany allows multiple pods across nodes to read and write.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
An emptyDir volume
Why it's wrong here
emptyDir is ephemeral and cannot be shared across nodes.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates often confuse ReadWriteOnce (RWO) with multi-pod access, but RWO restricts access to a single node, not a single pod, so multiple pods on the same node can share an RWO volume, but pods on different nodes cannot, making it unsuitable for the stated requirement.
Detailed technical explanation
Under the hood, ReadWriteMany is typically implemented by network-attached storage protocols such as NFSv4 or SMB/CIFS, or distributed filesystems like CephFS and GlusterFS, which use a shared filesystem layer that allows concurrent clients to coordinate locks and I/O. In a real-world scenario, a stateful application like a content management system or a shared workspace tool would use a PersistentVolumeClaim bound to an RWX PV backed by an NFS server, ensuring all pods can read and write the same data regardless of which node they run on. Note that not all storage provisioners support RWX; for example, most cloud provider block storage (e.g., AWS EBS, GCE PD) only supports RWO, so the choice of CSI driver or storage class is critical.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
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FAQ
Storage — This question tests Storage — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: A PersistentVolume with access mode ReadWriteMany — ReadWriteMany (RWX) is the only access mode that allows multiple pods across different nodes to simultaneously read and write to the same persistent storage volume. A PersistentVolume with access mode ReadWriteMany meets the requirement for a stateful application needing concurrent access from pods running on different nodes, typically backed by network filesystems like NFS, GlusterFS, or CephFS.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
This CKA practice question is part of Courseiva's free CNCF certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CKA exam.
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