CKA Workloads and Scheduling Practice Question
A StatefulSet named 'mysql' manages 3 replicas. You need to scale it down to 1 replica. What happens to the PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs) of the removed pods?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse StatefulSet PVC behavior with that of Deployments or Jobs, where pods and their volumes are ephemeral, leading them to incorrectly assume PVCs are automatically deleted on scale-down.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
The PVCs are retained to preserve data.
When a StatefulSet is scaled down, the PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs) associated with the removed pods are retained by default. This is because StatefulSets are designed for stateful workloads where data persistence is critical; the PVCs remain to preserve data in case the pod is recreated or the StatefulSet is scaled up again. Kubernetes does not automatically delete PVCs when a StatefulSet pod is removed, as PVC lifecycle is independent of pod lifecycle.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
The PVCs are retained to preserve data.
Why this is correct
When a StatefulSet is scaled down or deleted, Kubernetes intentionally preserves the associated PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs) to prevent accidental data loss. This ensures that if the StatefulSet is scaled back up or recreated, the new pods can seamlessly reattach to their existing storage volumes and resume operations with their historical data intact.
- ✗
The PVCs are automatically backed up before deletion.
Why it's wrong here
Kubernetes does not provide native, automatic backup mechanisms for PersistentVolumeClaims during scale-down or deletion events. Any backup or snapshotting of the underlying PersistentVolumes must be configured and triggered externally using third-party tools, CSI snapshotters, or custom operators, rather than relying on default StatefulSet behavior.
- ✗
The PVCs are retained only if the pod with the highest ordinal is removed first.
Why it's wrong here
Although StatefulSets naturally terminate pods in reverse ordinal order (from highest to lowest index) during a scale-down operation, the retention of PVCs is a fundamental behavior of the controller that applies universally. The preservation of storage is not conditional on the order of pod termination; PVCs are retained regardless of how or why the pods are removed.
- ✗
The PVCs are automatically deleted along with the pods.
Why it's wrong here
By default, the lifecycle of a PersistentVolumeClaim is decoupled from the lifecycle of the Pod that mounts it within a StatefulSet. Scaling down the replica count terminates the corresponding Pods, but the PVCs and their underlying PersistentVolumes remain untouched in the cluster until they are manually deleted by an administrator.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Installing Kubernetes with kubeadm
Key term
Ingress Resources
Ingress Resources are Kubernetes API objects that manage external access to services inside a cluster, typically HTTP and HTTPS traffic, by defining rules for routing requests based on hostnames and paths.
Key term
StatefulSets
A Kubernetes resource that manages stateful applications by providing stable network identities and persistent storage for each pod.
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